Two-year-old Daniyaal Abubaker was attending his second day at Mucky Pups Day Nursery in Garretts Green Lane, Birmingham, when he suffered a major injury to his right ear. Daniyaal needed 10 stitches and spent 2 nights in hospital to repair the damage, although it is not clear exactly how the incident happened.
The toddler’s mother, Afsha, 26, claims that she was given varying versions of the incident by nursery staff, including that he had been bitten by another child. Horribly, the missing part of the ear was not found and the family were told it may have been “eaten” by the other child.
Mrs Abubaker, said: “We still don’t know what happened to our son to this day, but to see your son in terrible pain with part of his ear missing was just horrific. I couldn’t stop crying. Daniyaal has been left traumatised. Sometimes when I move close to his face to kiss him he gets upset, he doesn’t like anyone to go close to his ear. He has been scarred mentally, not just physically.”
Mrs Abubaker said she received a call at around 11.30am on September 25th from the nursery owner, to say her son had injured his ear in a fall and that he “might require stitches”.
However, when her sister-in-law rang the nursery shortly afterwards, she was informed that Daniyaal had been punched.
Mrs Abubaker claims another sister-in-law, Arooj Arooj, picked injured Daniyaal up from the nursery, where the owner told her that he had been “bitten” by another child there.
‘‘When I spoke to the nursery again, and asked her what had happened to the piece of ear, they said the child must have swallowed it.’’
The family have contacted the police who are investigating the incident.
Ofsted inspection
Shortly after the alleged incident on September 25th, Ofsted inspectors visited the nursery and rated it ‘inadequate’.
They claimed risk assessments were not “rigorous enough” and stated the nursery did not “address all safety issues”.
A spokesman for West Midlands Police said: ‘‘Specialist officers from West Midlands Police Public Protection Unit are reviewing an incident, in which a young child suffered an injury to his ear.
‘‘Officers are in the process of contacting the family and relevant agencies, including Children’s Social Care, as part of the on-going inquiry.’’
Ofsted inspectors visited the nursery on October 2nd and gave it an inadequate rating and flagged up health and safety issues as an area of concern.
The report states: “Risks assessments are not rigorous enough as they do not address all safety issues in the nursery and staff do not help children learn how to be safe during activities.”
With such inconsistency in how staff reported this issue, how would you have handled things differently?
Please share your thoughts below.
Unbelievabe, That is absolutely disgraceful, The poor child and the family must be horrified. The training practitioners get at college is very good here in North Somerset (on making childrens health and safety top priority.
I absolutely feel everyone working with young children should be fully qualified and staff present should be accountable.
I have worked in nurseries and due to wanting to give a better quality of care to children and parents set up my own child minding service which I done for 5 years. I have since re trained to be a T/A and now work in Primary school with year 2 s.
In my experience nurseries can employ staff with no qualification providing that 2/3 rds are qualified.
I think a change in the law is needed where the only unqualified people working in nurseries are supervised students training.
I am writing without knowing if the staff were qualified and I think they should be all dragged to court and have to explain what the hell they were doing when this incident happened. I know from experience working with babies is very demanding with one adult to three babies, but if ratios are strictly adhered to and staff are good, the accidents that happen are minor. I have worked in nurseries where babies bite, and it is very difficult to be there to stop every incident, but when you know the children you are working with (which is a must), you can supervise particular children more vigilantly.
On this child,s second day, the child should have had a key worker near or with them.
Again Unbelievable.