School Injury Claims

If your child's injury is the result of someone else's negligence, we can help you make a claim. Examples of those you could make a claim against include:

• Schools and academies
• Teaching staff and others employed by the school
• Trusts in charge of the school or academy

To find out more about how we can help you, get in touch with our specialists today.

While the odd bump or scrape in the playground might be expected, oversights can lead to more serious injury. Where injury or illness could have been prevented, this can constitute negligence.

Examples of this could include:

• Faulty equipment, such as desks, chairs, or toys
• Slippery floors or loose carpets
• Contaminated or underprepared food in the canteen
• Lack of adequate supervision

You can sue a school if your child sustained a broken leg or another bone and it was caused by someone’s negligence.

You can’t sue if your child’s bone is broken while playing in the playground and no negligence caused the injury.

Contact our team and tell us more about what’s happened, and we can advise if you can make a claim.

When you first contact us, we’ll arrange a free initial consultation with one of our experts. There’s no obligation for you to continue with us after this talk. We will advise you if you can claim and what the best course of action will be.

If you decide you would like to use our team, we will begin by gathering evidence. Depending on the situation, we might gather different evidence, such as:

• Medical reports
• Witness statements
• CCTV

We also use independent medical experts to assess how your or your child’s accident has impacted future health. They will also recommend the care needs that must be in place.

If your claim is on behalf of your child, the case will have to go before a judge for an infant approval hearing. This hearing happens even when a compensation sum has been agreed with your opponent and is in place to make sure that your child gets a fair settlement.

If your claim relates to injuries to yourself, we’ll work to settle your claim out of court. However, if the other party doesn’t accept the blame, or we can’t agree on a settlement amount, we may need to take your claim to court to be settled. It may still be possible to settle your claim without going to court, even if trial dates have already been set.

If you’re making a claim on behalf of a child, you’ll normally be able to make a claim up until their 18th birthday. Despite this, we urge you to contact us as soon as possible if your child has been injured in an accident because we might be able to help them access rehabilitation and support to help with their recovery.

We can also help you make a claim if you were in an accident before you turned 18. If you want to claim compensation for an accident that happened while you were a child, you will have three years from your 18th birthday to make a claim.

If you’re claiming for yourself, you usually have three years from the date of the accident to make a claim. By getting in touch with us shortly after your accident, it can make collecting evidence a little easier, as there are often fewer problems finding witnesses whose statements we need to support your case.

When you make a claim for compensation, either for yourself or your child, you can use the money to pay for specialist medical treatment and rehabilitation. Our Support and Rehabilitation team can help you find the right support.

The amount of compensation you or your child will receive will consider:

• Private medical treatment: To help speed up and maximise recovery
• Home tutors: If your child has to take a lot of time off school, compensation can pay for tutoring to help them keep up with their work
• Loss of earnings: To compensate for any time off work
• Expenses: To cover the likes of travelling to and from medical appointments
• Rehabilitation: To ensure the best recovery possible, compensation can pay for rehabilitation and support both now and in the future
• Household adaptations: To help you or your child live more independently.

Compensation for children is usually kept in a protected account until they turn 18. The amount of compensation must first be agreed upon in an infant approval hearing before any funds can be paid out.

In an infant approval hearing, the judge will consider all the evidence to decide whether they agree with the proposed amount of compensation.

They will consider things like the extent of the child’s injuries and the cost of ongoing care they will need. As the litigation friend, you could be asked to provide information about this to support the claim.

Your child might need to attend these hearings, but this can depend on their age and the severity of their injuries.

Once your child turns 18, they will receive their settlement as well as any interest accrued. If there is a need to access some of the compensation earlier to cover care and education costs, for example, we can help you make an application to the court. The judge will decide whether this early payment is in the child’s best interests.

A personal injury trust can make sure your child has protection for the future and can only be accessed by trustees. You can make yourself a trustee and the other trustee must be a solicitor. In order to get money out of the personal injury trust, all trustees must agree to its release.