child protection

[masi]

Dear friend
I m new in the daycare.com n also new in staff in the child
I need your help how u solve the problem

# you are the authoried supervior in a 40 place long day care centre. One of the team members comes to you with concerns over a child. They feel the child has been arriving at the centre on a number of occasions with multiple bruises on both upper arms.what you would do, steps you need to take, documentation that needs to be kept and strategies to support the child, staff and family.

[Chuckles]

You are probably supposed to answer with the appropriate standards/laws regarding suspected child abuse. If that happened to me, I would try to ask the child what happened if they were verbal enough to tell me. I would document my observations and include the date, time, location of the injury and as much description about the injury as possible. For example, are the bruises shaped like anything in particular like finger marks, a belt mark etc? Then I would call in my concerns to the abuse/neglect hotline and provide them with as much information about the child as possible. DO NOT confront the parent because it would appear that the source of the bruising is unknown and you wouldn't want to make a situation worse. If your laws/regulations require anything additional, do that.

[jenn]

I would document every mark (date, location of mark, size and shape of mark). In my state, we are required to report any suspected abuse immediately.

[MarinaVanessa]

Depending on what country you are in I would check with your local child welfare agencies (child protective services etc.) and check the laws. If you are in the US you are required to report any suspected child abuse. If you yourself have not seen any bruising or don't feel like the bruising is abnormal or out of the realm of normal bruising from normal play but you were approached by another staff member who had suspicions about child abuse then I would strongly suggest to that staff member that they report the incident as soon as possible. Whether or not that staff member reported it I would also suggest that you yourself report that you were approached by the staff member with concerns and anything that you yourself saw or heard.

If you are not trained in interviewing children under child abuse circumstances then I would not interview the child. Child protective services has trained professionals that are qualified to ask a child these questions. Without proper training you could unintentionally prompt information out if this child that isn't true or could potentially cause the child to clam up and not want to share any information at all with anyone. Just leave the questioning to the professionals but make sure that the incident is reported.

I would also not intentionally make an extra effort to expose skin so that you can check for bruising. If the marks are visible without having to remove the clothes or expose more skin than is already visible then report those as well.