If your children attend daycare in Texas, you trust the staff to give your child adequate attention, consistent and reasonable supervision, and required care such as food, water, bathroom access, as well as treatment of minor scrapes and splinters. In some situations, children are injured at daycare due to negligence. This may be the result of a number of factors, but if any type of negligent actions (or inactions) resulted in injury to your child, he or she deserves compensation and a knowledgeable Austin daycare injury lawyer can help you and your family understand what legal options are available to you.

Proving Negligence with Daycare Injuries

In order to collect compensation for an injury, the victim and his or her Austin personal injury attorney need to establish that the injury would not have occurred had the defendant not acted in a negligent manner. In daycare injury cases, that means the victim’s family needs to prove that negligence caused the injuries. Negligence can take many forms, but at a daycare center, it usually involves any of three factors:

  • The staff fails to supervise the children in their care properly. Most states have regulations as to the staff member-to-children ratio, and daycare centers must be sure to have enough staff to provide supervision for all the children at the establishment, at all times.
  • Dangerous conditions on the property. This may include faulty structural features in the daycare center, dilapidated playground equipment, or any other fixture in the building or on the grounds that creates unsafe premises and is not addressed in a timely and reasonable manner (i.e. a pothole in a basketball court that creates a tripping hazard or exposed screws on an old playground set).
  • Criminal activity. If the daycare staff member or members in question were engaged in any type of illegal activity that contributed to your child’s injury, they may face criminal charges as well as a civil suit for causing the injury.

Proving negligence requires establishing three things:

  • The defendant owed your child a duty to act with reasonable care in their supervision and well-being during their time at the daycare.
  • The defendant breached this duty through some action, or in some cases, inaction.
  • That breach directly resulted in the child’s injury.

In extreme cases, some daycare staff members have been brought up on criminal charges for intentional abuse of children in their care. A civil claim may be possible, and the defendant could face criminal punishment if guilty.

Results of a Daycare Injury in Texas

Depending upon the circumstances of the victim’s injury, the daycare center may face heavy fines for unsafe premises or be forced to shut down until they bring the premises up to an acceptable standard. If a staff member intentionally abused a child, then pressing criminal charges could prevent them from harming others in the future.

If the victim’s parents or guardians and their Austin daycare injury lawyer are able to prove negligence on defendant’s part, the child and his or her parents may be entitled to compensation for medical expenses, the cost of ongoing or future treatments, lost income from the parents’ missing work, and pain and suffering. No parents want to see their child injured, and they place their trust in daycare employees to provide proper supervision and care to their children. If the daycare staff fails to do so, either negligently or intentionally, the victims deserve recompense and justice.

Ross • Scalise Employment Lawyers | Daycare Injury Attorneys in Austin, TX

At Austin law firm of the Ross • Scalise Employment Lawyers, our team understands how devastating it can be to see your child suffer an injury. If you believe your child’s injury was the result of negligence at daycare, reach out to us for an initial evaluation. We’ll go over the details with you and let you know what to expect. No one who suffers an injury as the result of another person’s negligence should have to deal with it alone, especially if that victim is your child. Contact our legal team today, and we’ll work to hold the responsible parties accountable.