Posted By Brian
I'm seeking advice on how to proceed with the possibility of taking legal action against a nursery.
My 22 month old littel boy started in a new ofsted nursery on the 5th October, within 2 1/2 half hours my wife recieved a phone call to tell her that he had had an accident.
The actual acident involved my son being allowed on a wooden step structure with a landing with steps on either side and carperted.According to the poor investigation report from the nursery my son was stood on the first step about 6" high, he fell forward with his back to the step and fell face first on to a childs toy dolls cot,which was at the base of the stairs.
The accident resulted in my son knocking out his top upper front set of teeth. My question to the nursery nurse manager was if according her they had the correct ratio of staff to children why was'nt my son being correctly supervised and why was he allowed on the stairs on his own, obviuolsy a hazard when it comes to falls?
My son now has to see a dental specialist to see what damage has been done, this could have an effect on his adult teeth in the future, also my son will not have any front teeth untill his adult teeth come through. can anyone advise me on what action to take against the nursery.All construction advise welcome.

Posted By Mark1983
You could contact a 'no win no fee' company and ask for their advice. The school has a duty of care so it shouldn't be a problem. Do it sooner rather than later & let us know how you got on.

Posted By Fornhelper
Brian

Sorry to hear about your son's accident and hope that he is OK.

I would suggest though that your rush to seek legal redress is typical of what is happening in the UK today and the reason that we have become such a 'risk averse' society.

Kids will be kids and unless we wrap them up in cotton wool then accidents like this will happen. I can't see that the nursery have done that much wrong and if they have met the staffing / child ratio then what more can they do? Put away a toy the minute a child stops playing with it? Keep kids in penned areas so they can't explore and learn?

As all parents know it is difficult to keep kids under constant surveillance and in your position I would be glad that my child only suffered minor injuries and put it down to life experience.

Regards
FH

Posted By clairel
Sorry your kid has been hurt but this is the wrong forum for your question. Most of us deal in criminal law and your question relates to pursuing a civil claim against a third party, which is a different specialism to health and safety legislation and requires the knowldge of a solicitor(and might I add that many of us have strong views about such claims).

Consult a local solicitor if you feel that way inclined.

Posted By Stuff4blokes
Brian, 2 days on and you are looking to take action against the nursery. If I had ever been in the situation you describe I suspect I may too have been angry and thrashing about looking to someone to blame.

My advice is to take a few days, preferably weeks to reflect. Then if you still feel that action is necessary take legal advice. The majority of people on this forum are more used to preventing harm and defending potential claims than giving advice on how to make a claim.

Beware of some sharks our there.

Posted By D. Hilton
DPK

Why do you say "Interesting that the first two posters have suggested you contact legal services".

Brian asked "can anyone advise me on what action to take against the nursery.All construction advise welcome".

As I am not a legal professional and am not in the habit of spoofing or giving opinion on areas outside my professional field, the advice to contact a legal professional is entirely valid.

Posted By clairel
Actually Brian I wouldn't be angry. That's my point. Too many people want to blame someone, when in fact I think the truth is we nearly always blame ourselves (for not being there)and just displace the anger at someone else.

I lost count of the times I was called up because one of my two had banged their head or cut themsleves or hurt themselves in some way.

Never once did I think I should blame the pre-school nursery or the school - or my mother when she was looking after them come to that.

Sure be upset about the injury but do you really need to feel angry at the nursery or even blame them?

Professional opinion on the basis of what you said - they didn't do anything wrong.

Give your kid a big hug. Then laugh about it. Then forget about it. There are worse things that could happen.

Posted By Andy Brazier
Can I just clarify. When you say your son was "stood on the first step about 6" high" when he fell are you saying he fell 6 inches or 6 feet?

I'd read it as inches, in which case it seems like a very normal childhood event, but your son was rather unlucky.

Posted By graeme12345
My little lad occasionally fell overt when he was very young, we took him to our GP who diagnosed "glue ear" and he required grommets fitted for about two years. After that fine,might be a good idea to have him checked out.

Whats the point of an accident investigation, to prevent a recurrence, not to apportion blame.

I had a look around my school when my son started , looked at where he would study,where he would play , the field etc.and i did not know what "ratios" there were to staff and kids.
And i did not bother to find out, a mere oversight on my part, and i also did not inspect the school as thousands of other parents do not as well.

We do not because we are "normal" people, we make mistakes,
We all make mistakes, the same as the carer may have done, took their eyes of your lad for a brief moment, with your experience and expertise did you not do everything you could to find out everything that would have concerned your child when he is at this school in their care?

No you did not, because you are only normal!

Do not go down the route of a claim, use your experience and expertise to prevent it from happening again to other kids

(although you have not mentioned this once in your post, which only asks others for evidence so that you can make a claim)

Posted By Lee Mac
Brian

Ouch! That does definitely sound like a nasty accident- the poor wee man. I fully appreciate your sentiments regarding was it appropriate play equipment for such a wee lad.

In my personal opinion- no, the nursery staff should have had a little more sense that to allow a young lad like yours onto the steps without holding/ being very close to them.

For those of you who think we are wrapping our kids up in cotton wool- you need to take stock here- this was a child who definitely should not be allowed onto steps without strict supervision and I mean strict. Any basic risk assessment would show what toys are for "crawlers", "waddlers" and "walkers"- this one was by all accounts for a walker- normally 3yrs and over.

Whether or not you take legal action Brian is another matter. Being a father is a tough task but you need to ask yourself would a meeting with the nursery supervisor/ owner be an avenue you wish to explore- it would provide you with an opportunity to lay your cards on the table, have a look at their risk assessments (perhaps you could improve on them) and see if anything improves- if not, well then the next step would be down to you.

IMO don't leave it- ask to speak with the powers sooner rather than later that be as you don't want to see a reoccurrence.

I had a similar incident happen to my wee lad (he was two also) at nursery- I had a meeting with the owner and the supervisor- both were extremely apologetic, professional and could see my point. Things did improve vastly.

Hope it all works out for you and I wish your son a speedy recovery.


Lee

Posted By steve e ashton
There's a fairly major conference in Scotland at the moment on the 'risk aversion' we are creating in our society, and the potential damage this is doing / could be doing to our young. See here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/..._and_central/8294502.stm

My point being - I feel we are becoming more risk averse largely because we hear reports of claims which many feel should not be allowed. I make no comment or judgement on the potential merits or otherwise of any claim or other action following the unfortunate accident to Brians wee lad.

I'm not heartless, I always shudder when I hear of injuries involving kids. I've brought up three myself, and they've had their share of misfortune (including one with both front teeth knocked out though her upper lip)

But I would ask those who have posted on this thread to review for themselves whether their postings may be promoting the kind of risk aversion that HSE IOSH and others at this conference are supposed to be working to overturn? Time for a bit of navel gazing I would suggest.

Steve

Posted By Jimmy Greaves
clairel makes a valid point in terms of advice - dreadful that the accident most definitely is, but to want to take action against the nursery may not be the best way forward.

If you are successful in your action against the nursery what affect will it have on the nursery and the staff? Will 'they' want to continue to run the nursery, would 'they' find the staff willing to run it, will the national publicity that a case might bring put people off setting up nurseries etc etc?

With children you can't always legisate for accidents as you know.

Best to think how to move forward with this without continuing the pain

Posted By AHS
I think supervision of children can be lacking and I can see more people taking Schools to Court.

I cant comment on this case other than to reiterate the advice of seeing a decent lawyer.

Posted By AHS
The only advice I gave was to speak to a lawyer.

If people feel that adequate supervision is never a problem in schools then I have to disagree.

Posted By Kate Gibb
Brian,

I too sympathise, it must be horrible to see your little boy in such a state.

However, as a Rainbow (pre-brownies group) leader, I know all to well how difficult it is to prevent children having accidents. A child once fell over (her feet, whilst running) right near a wall, and banged her head. Fortunately other than a big egg on her head, she was OK. However, I felt dreadful, and being a safety professional wondered what I could have done to prevent this accident. Stop children running around? Pad the walls?

Often there is no simple answer, other than making play areas very bland and dull places indeed.

If you want to make a claim, a lot of the above advice is sensible. However, if you believe the nursery are culpuble, and haven't responded effectively, why don't you contact the HSE? This accident would be reported under RIDDOR if your son was taken to hospital. Whilst HSE may not automatically investigate the incident, if you report it as a complaint, they would normally look into it.

Brian, I hope your little boy makes a full recovery, and doesn't have any lasting problems with his teeth.

Kate

Posted By Peter F.
Is this a genuine concern for the safety of youngsters in someone else's care or is it really more concerned about how much can be made.

I appreciate that a young person has been hurt, but would you expect to be taken to court every time a baby fell down the stairs because you turned your back at the wrong time, toppled over and banged their head on a coffee table. If that was the case all children in every country would be under the care of the local authority. Sometimes accidents happen and we have to except that everything possible was done, the baby wasn't hurt by a piece because of faulty equipment, it may have been human error the steps to close to the cot, but we don't know how the cot was so close did the kids move it(we don't know the ages of the group.

I would like to say I am surprised that the thread has been dealt with in the way it has with a lot of suggestions about seeing a lawyer etc. but I'm not it's a sad state of affairs when even the professionals who could offer so much more constructive advice can only offer 'sue them'

I am fully aware that these pages can be visited by anyone and we are all entitled to say what we want.

Posted By Peter F.
Of course it's easy to say see a lawyer because he asked ablout legal advice, it's harder to actually think and give other suitable advice.

Posted By Peter F.
Grim,

I for one agree, parents used to show us how to stay safe, I remember my dad falling out of a tree showing me how to climb safety needless to say I decide to climb down my own way.

He didn't sue the owner of the land for his fall he picked himself up and said 'I thought I'd show you how not to get down just in case'

On these pages there are a lot of links to newspaper articles and everyone's up in arms, Conkers Bonkers is one that springs to mind, not allowed to be with more than one child in the swimming pool, at the time a lot of people were condemning the articles and worrying how it effects us as a profession, of course once someone is hurt they seem to forget this to easily.

Posted By Jez Corfield
Hello Brian,

Sounds nasty, hopefully your child will recover soon enough.

Standards, including standards relating to safety and supervision, in nursery and child care environments are the remit of Ofsted, each facility is graded by them, and they have an Ofsted inspector (locally) who may well be assigned to this nursery.

You can view the previous reports for the nursery online, and this might tell you a little about safety and supervision. Their website also includes information about the minimum standards to be expected.

If you feel its a fundamental failure by the nursery, rather than one of those things that just happens to children, it may be worth contacting Ofsted, they will have inspectors in your area.

Alternatively you can use Ofsted to make a formal complaint against a childcare facility, and they will (unless I am much mistaken) be obliged to feedback to you.

The talk of solicitors is one thing, but commercial nurseries are far more concerned about their Ofsted grading, and I suspect this would be the best route to take your concerns.

Please feel free to email me,

Regards

Jez