There are many ways a child can get injured at even the most well staffed daycare facility in Boston. Even with proper supervision and the best safety protection, children tend to run and trip and that can result in a serious personal injury. While your child can fall and become injured without any negligence whatsoever, the daycare employees are sometimes very careless in what they do after the accident and it is often this response, or lack thereof, that can lead to aggravation of the injury, and that is where negligence comes into play.
Daycare Workers Responsibilities in Boston Child Injury Cases
We tend to see cases where a parent picks up their child and is told nothing, or that some minor accident occurred, but the child is fine. This is especially the case with children too young to tell their parent what actually happened. What a daycare center should do is to seek prompt medical attention for the child if necessary and call the child’s parents to let them know what happened. While every parent dreads a call from their child’s daycare provider, it is much better to know what is wrong than not knowing anything at all.
Alleged Inappropriate to Daycare Injury
The parent quickly realizes there is something very wrong with their son or daughter and takes the child to a pediatric emergency room and discovers broken bones or even organ damage. According to a recent news article from CBS News, parents removed their child from a daycare program following some concerning allegations.
The parents alleged they picked up their 4-year-old son from a local daycare and noticed the child had a bloody lip and his front teeth were loose. They asked staff what happened because they were allegedly not told about the accident which occurred around 90 minutes before pickup time. The child had not been given any medical attention up until this point.
The daycare staff allegedly told the parents the child had tripped while running. When hit the floor face first, his mouth came into contact with the hard tiles. The form on the daily report did had a check-mark in a box that indicated treatment was not required. The child reportedly told his parents on the way to the emergency room that there was blood all over the floor but a daycare workers had already cleaned it up.
At this hospital, they learned their child had tearing in the connective tissue in his mouth and of course he had the loose teeth. As a follow-up to his care, the parents were informed that the teeth may not settle on their own and they would need to be extracted the following week if that occurred.
Typical Boston Daycare Injuries
In the case of broken bones, which are a common type of injury that occurs in Boston daycare facilities, the child must be given prompt medical attention. When a bone is fractured, or there is a suspected fracture, imaging should be done right away to see if there is a stable fracture or a compound fracture. If the bone is misaligned, it will start to heal in the incorrect position and this can require doctors to break the bone again and perform surgery to repair it properly. In some cases, a bone that has been left to heal incorrectly will result in permanent impairment as as well as significant pain and suffering.
In some cases, doctors will be able to reduce (stabilize) a broken bone externally by pressing on the patient’s body in a certain way, and in other cases, it will require a surgical reduction involving pins, screws, bolts, and possibly external metal plates. According to Wellmont Health System, a broken ankle often requires an open reduction and internal fixitive surgery where a seven-hole plate is bolted directly to the bones of the ankle.
Typical Damages in Boston Daycare Injury Cases
Again, it is important to understand that if the original injury at a Boston daycare center was not the result of negligence, but the response was negligent, this can lead to a valid personal injury lawsuit if that caused pain and suffering, or any additional damages that would not have resulted from proper treatment. These damages can include the following:
- Pain and Suffering
- The cost of additional medical procedures made necessary by a negligent response to the accident.
- The cost of additional rehabilitation mandated by the inappropriate response to your child’s medical condition.
- Physiological counseling mandated as a result of the negligent response.
- Other types of special damages.
In some cases, there will be a need to have an expert on the standard of care opine as to whether the staff acted appropriately. In other cases, the law will determine that a layperson on the jury is capable of determining whether defendant was negligent in caring for your child, or responding to accident that occurred at the daycare center. This may be determined depending on the facts of the actual case so it is best for potential plaintiffs to speak with an experienced Boston personal injury that regularly handles accidents that occur at daycare center.
If you are injured in Boston, call Jeffrey Glassman Injury Lawyers for a free and confidential appointment — (617) 777-7777.
Additional Resources:
Parents pull 4-year-old from Happy Faces day care after injury, November 6, 2017, By Megan Hahn, CBS News
More Blog Entries:
Summer Swimming Pool Safety in New England, May 15, 2014, Boston Personal Injury Lawyer Blog