It can be very difficult for parents to choose a good daycare center for their children. Every parent wants their child to be safe and happy when they are not there to care for the child personally. Some signs of a dangerous daycare can be difficult to spot, and very young children may not have the skills to describe what goes on after you leave. It is important for parents to continuously monitor their children for any signs of abuse or neglect, including suspicious injuries. It can be equally important to keep a close eye on the facility itself. If you notice certain signs, you may want to at minimum, find a new daycare. Other signs may indicate that it is time to seek help and call a lawyer.

What Are Some Signs That a Daycare Is Not Safe?

Distinguishing between a sign of danger and the expected results of children playing in a group setting can be tricky. It may be a good idea to keep a written log of any questionable signs so that you will more easily notice patterns over time. Clues that a daycare center may not be the safest place for your children include:

• Staff turnover - If a daycare center cannot seem to keep staff members around very long, there could be a problem. Qualified and concerned childcare providers tend to leave very quickly if they find that the facility they are working at is not complying with DCFS regulations or is otherwise unsafe. Additionally, the constant need for rapid hiring can lead to important steps - like the background check - being omitted.
• Multiple complaints - Any business can find itself on the receiving end of an angry Yelp rant, no matter what they do. However, if you are seeing multiple complaints from different people and on different platforms, this is a good sign that most of them are probably accurate.
• Child behavior - You know your child better than anyone. If you start to see troubling behavior changes, particularly if they seem to revolve around going to daycare, something could be very wrong. If it is not typical for your child to become upset when you try to drop them off, or to “act out” after you pick them up, you may need to investigate further.
• Dirt - Children have a way of making big messes, especially in a group. That said, the daycare should appear clean each morning. If the facility is constantly dirty, there may be hygiene-related safety concerns.
• Low communication - Getting a response from the people caring for your child should not be like pulling teeth. If messages and emails are going unanswered, or you have trouble getting someone on the phone during the day when you need to, this should raise an alarm.

When in doubt, it is always better to investigate. The cause of your concern could turn out to be nothing at all, but if it does turn out to be a safety problem, you will be glad that you acted. If your child has already been harmed, get them any care they need and call an attorney.

It seems counterintuitive, to say the least. One would think that with more people working from home and avoiding large gatherings, there would be less traffic, equating to fewer opportunities for drivers to hit each other. You may be surprised to learn that the opposite is true. 2021 was the most dangerous year to be out on our roads in over a decade. Motor vehicle crash fatalities have only increased, despite there being generally less traffic. There are a number of theories floating around to explain this shift, most of which directly relate to how the pandemic has changed the mindsets of many drivers. Reckless driving behaviors, experts suggest, are on the rise.

Getting hurt in a car accident during a public health crisis can make your entire situation more difficult to deal with. If your crash was caused by a careless or reckless driver, an attorney may be able to recover financial compensation on your behalf.

How Is the Pandemic Contributing to More Dangerous Roads?

It all comes down to psychology, according to experts from Johns Hopkins and Temple University, among others. In the midst of a crisis, people are likely to be in a heightened emotional state, which can lead to reckless driving behaviors. All those cars out on I-294 at rush hour may not be stuck bumper-to-bumper quite like they were pre-pandemic when many more people had to commute, but the lack of traffic has not triggered a lack of road rage. If anything, road rage-related incidents are becoming increasingly common.

No parent ever hopes to receive a phone call from their child’s daycare saying that their child has been injured. This scenario would be a nightmare for most. Parents trust daycare centers to keep their kids safe, but accidents and injuries do happen in these facilities. While children are notoriously accident-prone, many daycare injuries could have been prevented or at least lessened in severity with appropriate care. Children are too often harmed due to the negligence of daycare staff. If your child was hurt at daycare, you may want to consult an attorney about your options for pursuing compensation. Further investigation may be needed to determine the cause of your child’s injury.

What Should I Do if My Child Gets Injured in Daycare?

You may be experiencing a range of emotions after learning that your child was injured at daycare. Parents are often shocked, fearful, and angry during the aftermath of a daycare accident. It can be difficult to remember the steps you need to take. Generally, steps you should take after a daycare injury include:

• Medical care - Make sure that your child receives prompt medical treatment first. Getting a thorough medical workup is especially important for very young children who may not be able to adequately describe what they are feeling or where their pain is.
• Request footage - Daycare centers should have cameras everywhere. If possible, ask for video footage of the accident. If the daycare refuses to provide this, it should make you a bit suspicious that there is something they are not telling you.
• Witnesses - Make note of which staff members were working that day, and take down the names of any other adults who may have been present at the time, such as other parents or volunteers.
• Photos - Take pictures of your child’s injury. If you get to the daycare quickly enough, it may also make sense to take pictures of the area where the accident occurred. If faulty playground equipment, for example, caused the injury, you may later need these images to show how the accident occurred.
• Details - The more information you can get about how your child got hurt, the more it could help your case later.

Calling an attorney is perhaps the most important step. Investigating daycare accidents can be challenging. Children do not always make the strongest witnesses, and negligent staff members may hesitate to truthfully explain what happened. Having an experienced attorney step in can be enormously helpful.

When it comes to recovering compensation after a car accident, things may seem like they should be simple. Another driver was being careless. They crashed into you. They pay for your injuries and other expenses related to the accident. Rarely, however, is the actual process of filing a claim and receiving what you are rightfully owed as uncomplicated as it should be.

There are a number of sometimes complex legal issues surrounding car accident claims that may require the attention of a skilled lawyer to resolve. From proving the cause of a wreck to dealing with an uninsured driver, a number of issues can further complicate your case. It is best to have complex car accident claims handled by a qualified attorney.

Reasons Your Car Accident Case Could Become Complicated

Motor vehicle crashes are inherently chaotic events. Unfortunately, the aftermath can be quite chaotic as well depending on all the facts and surrounding circumstances. If any of these issues are present in your car accident case, you will probably need an attorney’s help to resolve them:

Parents expect daycare centers to be safe places for young children. Toddlers and babies in particular require extensive supervision. Anyone who has spent time around a little one that age can tell you that they are prone to hurting themselves when not watched carefully in a safe environment. This is why child care professionals are required to follow strict safety standards to minimize the risk of a child getting hurt. If your child was put in an unsafe situation and got injured at daycare, you will want to speak to a qualified personal injury attorney as soon as possible to put you on the path to recovering compensation.

What Injuries Are Children Most at Risk for in Day Care?

While all children will occasionally come home with minor scrapes or bruises from falling down on the playground, most more serious injuries in daycare centers are preventable. You may have a case for pursuing compensation if your child sustained one of these injuries in a child care facility:

• Choking - Staff is expected to keep the children’s environment free from choking hazards. If toys offered by the facility are not appropriately screened, they could come with small parts that a small child could choke on. Grapes, hot dogs, and other easy to choke on foods should be appropriately cut in half lengthwise before being served.
• Deep lacerations - Minor scrapes are normal - deep cuts that require stitching or gluing are not. A serious cut could be the result of an exposed nail or sharp edge that should have been covered. Or, a staff member may have negligently entrusted a young child with a dangerous sharp object like non-safety scissors.
• Broken bones - Playground equipment should be age-appropriate and safe, and children must be adequately supervised to ensure they are playing safely. Falls from slides, jungle gyms, and other tall equipment may suggest that the playground was unreasonably dangerous for children in that age range or that the children are being allowed to misuse equipment by climbing or horseplaying.
• Burns - Nothing hot enough to cause significant burns should be accessible to children in daycare centers. If your child was burned, it is extremely likely that she was put in a dangerous position with an unsafe object.

Having a child get hurt in a child care facility can be horrifying. You trust your daycare center to keep your child safe while you are not there, so finding out they allowed your child to be injured can shake you. Fortunately, you may be able to pursue compensation.