Feeling vunerable!!

[lor]

Hi there

will try to keep this short!

Have a child who comes to me one day a week was origanaly 2 days then dropped to the one (insticnit told me to get rid -wish i'd listened!!)

my assistant(my sister) took her down this evenining to mum- mum asked to spk to me ???
she said that the child had returned from my place the week before with terrible nappy rash and she wondered why -I explained that a week was along time ago and everything was written in daily diary
there was lot more said but dont want to bore you all.Have since had a rather aggerisive text but I have decided to leave it to Monday(bussinesses hours) think I want to call mum in for a
chat and write it down as record of conversation but ultimately dwould like to give notice.
I would appreciate any opinions as i just feel really sad at the moment,and as title suggeset feeing very vunerable although iam supposedly self employed.

forgive spelling mistakes and thx in advance x x

[BallyH]

Yes we are vunerable. This is the business we choose to work in. Everyday I think 'how can I protect myself from allegation', extreme yes but essential.
Did you write in the daily diary the first day and every day since when you noticed the nappy rash? And mum never responsed, verbally or wrtten in the diary under your entry, about the rash?
Why didn't you speak to the person collecting the child the first evening? Or any of the other evenings if the nappy rash was only referred to in the diary? Did you apply cream? I'm assuming you have presmission? These are all questions that she could fire back at you.
You say you want to give notice. Are there other reasons? I would invite mum in for a chat and explain the reasons to all my questions above. You have to appear that you tried to prevent the rash and that you did everything to inform mum at every opportunity available.
Children in my care have had nappy rashes before. One was allergic to rubber gloves. But I would always speak to the person collecting the first evening even if I had written it in the communication book.
Best of luck with your chat. Be confident and believe in yourself.

[Simona]

Spot on MOH...so important for cms to cover themselves and have a very very clear Safeguarding policy section on what we will do in cases of an allegation....that way parents would not be tempted to ignore the message.

We seem to be more preoccupied with Prevent and BV than looking after ourselves!
Lor...hope you get it sorted....nappy rash is something that keeps recurring quite a lot, not sure why parents leave it for a week to bring it up, maybe you could look at tweaking your policy on this.

Good luck

[bunyip]

I agree about being obliged to 'cover ourselves', but isn't this just symptomatic of how so-called "safeguarding" is going far too far these days? At the very least, isn't it a case of 'the best being the enemy of the good' when we start thinking of nappy rash as yet another safeguarding issue.

I'm not suggesting children should be allowed to suffer the discomfort of nappy rash unnecessarily, bu it is a fact of life for many babies: hardly worthy of being flagged as a "safeguarding issue". . I think it rather devalues the whole issue of safeguarding when we use the same term to address nappy rash and child abuse. I can see it not being too long before people treat 'safeguarding' with some measure of derision and begin to dismiss it with the same contempt as "health and safety gone mad." And then that will be a real danger.

The problem with "covering ourselves" is this. Are we really at the point where we feel obliged to protect ourselves from such accusations by getting mums to sign 'existing injury' forms when their babies arrive at our premises with nappy rash? Astonishingly, it seems we probably are, at least with a small minority of mums, such as lor's client. I think every single one of my clients would consider that way OTT. In fact, it's precisely that sort of thing that drives many families away from choosing (over-)registered childcare into less bureaucratic unregistered care. It's The Law of Unintended Consequences.

That said, I can sympathise with the idea of "covering ourselves". I think we've probably all encountered mums who get very defensive if they're asked to sign for an existing injury like a small bruise, but are very quick to criticise when their lo sustains an identical sort of small bruise at nursery/CM's.

I'm not criticising Simona's post. But the danger is that we lump every little thing in under the heading of "safeguarding" whether serious or trivial. Then safeguarding will get a bad name (like "health and safety") and before we know it, people will stop taking the serious things seriously. Again, The Law of Unintended Consequences starts its pervasive work if we do but let things run their insidious course.

I'm very used to the culture of 'covering your 4r5e' as we called it on the railways, where it reached untold levels of insanity, such that you could very easily lose your job for trying to save someone's life. When contractors booked on to do maintenance work, a supervisor was expected to carry out dozens of checks on each individual contractor (the union warned this could take up to 2 hours of lost work for a small signal repair team before they could even hang up their jackets and make their way to the work site. )

As for the OP, the client's aggression and the fact that "there was lot more said" does make me wonder if the nappy rash was nothing more than a pretense for some other perceived grievance the mum might be holding. As already mentioned, why did she leave it a week to bring up if it's so important to her? Maybe because she'd have had to prove it was really there if she'd mentioned it straight away?

Even if we are bandying the word "safeguarding" about, I can't see Ofsted coming out to investigate nappy rash.

If the contract has a future, then I'd simply discuss with mum: ask her to provide her choice of bum-cream (signed for) and agree to record every nappy change in the diary. But from what you've said, this may well be a client who is on her way through your door for the last time before long.

[Simona]

For cms it is very important to understand how to act in case of an allegation against us...we can call it 'cover ourselves' or anything we like....but we should be clear to parents what we would do in our safeguarding policy

Any Safeguarding training that does not address that issue for cms is questionable....many trainers would agree
I also believe we need to treat safeguarding carefully.

I agree on nappy rash ...it happens and should be dealt immediately not brought up as a stick to beat us with a month later.

It can turn into a safeguarding issue...depends how it is looked at and what follows...those with experience can vouch for that .

Bunyip...I personally feel cms need to cover themselves because Ofsted have made easy and encourage anyone to report anything they do not like about our services via the complaints line and treated with confidentiality...isn't that what has triggered the current crisis in EY inspections: complaints which are often found to be malicious but we cannot know the origin of and have resulted in many being downgraded?

It is all 'top down' pressure and cms are very vulnerable...lots of work is being done in this area to continue to protect cms and we have no union to stand up for us.