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[lenkam99]

Jurisdiction/Place: USA - New York

My son was injured in child care today. My husband and I came to pick up our kids from child care after 6pm.. just to find out that our son was injured during the day, prior to nap time, approximately 12pm. The owner's story and one of the worker's stories are a little different. My son's left arm was swallen all around and bruised. In so many words they said that he ran into a wall. No one called to notify us of the accident. They said that they put butter on it.. why not ice? .. and our son went to sleep as usual (for nap time). They said he did not cry. We have two other kids in the same group as our son, and at home they said that he did cry when he hurt himself. The swelling looked pretty bad and his arm looked a bit crooked. Immediately following child care we took our son to the doctor and then the ER. It turned out that he got a fractured arm from this accident. What responsibilies does the child care have to us as parents? My son was unable to get a proper cast on his arm due to the amount of swelling. So we will have to wait to get a proper cast when the swelling goes down. For now he got a splint. We are also scheduled to leave on vacation in two days, the day after Thanksgiving.

Basically.. what are the responsibilities of the child care? Were they negligent in not notifying us immediately when this happened? Can we file a claim against their insurance or have a suit against the child care? Since a bractured arm is not a good enough excuse for our trip insurance policy to cancel, we will be going on vacation. Now we have to find a waterproof cover for my son's splint, on Thanksgiving. We have been extremely stressed about this incident and the fact that we will be leaving the country on vacation (or lose a lot of $$$ by staying home).

My son has previously hurt himself in this daycare, where he fell and had a huge swolen split bruise on his forehead and no one bothered to notify us then either.

The owner of the facility seems to be taking way too much responsibility in to his own hands. Shouldn't it be our parental right to decide what/how to follow up with our kids' injuries???

What are our parent rights, besides taking our kids out of this daycare?

[jharris352]

Legally you are asking the question the wrong way, but with the same answer. You don't have "rights" but the daycare does have responsibilities or "duties" that they owe you when they are taking care of your child. That may seem like legaleese and maybe it is, but rights deal with governments and duties are dealt with in tort law.

The first duty they have toward you and your child is "due care." Kids are going to get hurt, though I would question the other kids about what happened to make sure they were watching him properly. Secondly they have a duty to provide proper medical care to the child after he is hurt. I'm not a doctor, but putting butter on his arm sounds bizarre to me. Were they basting him for the oven? Finally, when he has a serious injury, and I would say anything that swells is serious enough, they have a duty to give him proper medical care (taking him to the doctor) and when it is that serious, certainly they have a duty to INFORM the parents.

I would argue that they did not act properly. They acted in their own interests and were poorly trained. Putting butter on the arm is just funny if it weren't so serious. Not taking the child to the doctor could be a sign they didn't want to spare the manpower. You DEFINITELY have a medical claim on their insurance for the doctor bills. You might consult an attorney about a negligence claim and get a few thousand dollars out of their liability policy for failing to act properly after the injury.

Happy Thanksgiving. I charge double for advice on holidays (Free Free).

[MarkHarris1237]

Child care have to take care of children in all kind of situation and they have to tell true thing to the child's parents.