Entrusting your child to daycare can be daunting for parents. There are many facts parents need to know about how a daycare should operate, including how they are allowed to discipline your children.
The Husband & Wife Law Team comprises compassionate daycare injury attorneys who want what is best for you and your family. If you believe a daycare has overstepped when disciplining your child, contact us today.
What Does the Law Say About Childcare Providers and Discipline?
The Administrative Code §9-5-510 contains a comprehensive description of permitted disciplinary measures. Daycares are allowed to discipline children by restraining them or removing them from a situation. Both are subject to guidelines, however, such as not being permitted to remove children under two and only allowing a removed child to be left alone for three minutes. A staff member must promptly interact with the child and explain why a particular behavior is not allowed, and suggest alternatives.
Daycares are not allowed to discipline children in a way that could harm their health, safety, or welfare. This includes not being permitted to use corporal punishment or abusive language. Daycares are also not allowed to associate discipline with eating, napping, sleeping, toileting, or proper administration of medication.
How Can You Determine Whether Your Child Has Been Abused?
A daycare could abuse your child in several ways including using unacceptable forms of discipline and neglecting your child. Some examples of neglect include unsafe conditions, such as improperly assembled cribs, exposed curtains and blind cords, bedding that could choke a child, and poor facility maintenance. If your child has been abused at a daycare, they may exhibit behavioral changes, such as mood swings or personality changes, or a normally confident child becoming withdrawn and shy.
Abuse may also affect a child’s sleeping patterns, or lead to a regression where a walking child may revert to crawling, or a potty-trained child may start to soil themselves again. You may notice unexplained marks or bruises on your child’s body, which your child may try to hide. Your child may also experience unexplained aches and pains such as headaches or stomach aches, where emotional trauma presents itself with physical symptoms.
Your Ability to Pursue Compensation
The Husband & Wife Law Team can help if you suspect your child has been wrongly disciplined in daycare. We can advise you on the law surrounding your specific situation. Two legal limbs must be considered in establishing your claim.
The first involves determining the type of injuries sustained by your child, and whether the infliction of this injury was intentional or accidental. The severity and the number of times it occurred are factors of this limb.
The second limb involves determining the provider’s state of mind when the abuse occurred, and whether or not they intended to harm your child. Questions such as whether the provider had adequate training policies and exercised appropriate common sense are also relevant.
Most daycares have mandatory liability insurance, which is important to bear in mind when bringing a claim. This means that it is the insurance company you will be fighting for compensation. Insurance companies have many strategies in place to avoid paying compensation.
The Husband & Wife Law Team knows these strategies and how to counter them, to ensure you receive the compensation you and your child deserve. The Husband & Wife Law Team sincerely hopes you and your child never need their services, but if you do, please contact us today.