I have had to once and members of my team have as well for children who were under our care.

The time that stands out to me the most was a case where we kept hearing stories from the child (3 turning 4) of how he would get food while daddy was sleeping. Now kids this age have vivid imaginations and tell stories a lot but some things he kept saying kept making us stop and think. His dad also would say odd things to us about what happened at home and we just kept getting weird feelings, but as far as we could tell they were just a quirky family. One day the dad said that he woke up and the child had eaten an entire package of breakfast bars with scissors. I asked the boy about the story and he said he was hungry because he didn't eat when it was dark (night time) or when the sun woke up (morning) and didn't want to wake daddy up so daddy wouldn't get mad.

This alone had us deciding to go ahead and make the call just for a welfare check up. What happened the next day is something that I'll never forgive myself for taking so long to report. He came to school late (as usual) and had nail marks on his arms, back, and belly as well as a very clear, dark hand print on his face. You could see each joint from the persons fingers across his face. you could see where one finger caught his eye and bruised the thin skin under his eye. I couldn't keep it together. I wanted to make sure I kept him safe with us so I let the dad drop off as usual and as soon as his dad was out of the building we called cps and took many, many photos and had everyone write up incident reports. He told us “mommy get mad and hurt me” and I lost it.

Cps ended up investigating and we heard that him and his siblings were left at their apartment all day alone and in one instance the child was wandering around a busy road alone as the cps agents were pulling up.

For a few weeks he remained at my center and every day the dad would angrily tell us all about how we were ruining their home life for no reason (even though this poor baby obviously deserved a safer home life) and tried to blame us for him potentially losing his job due to him having to take off to take care of his child.

To this day the whole situation makes me sick and I regret so much not listening to my gut when I first felt uneasy about the situation. I often wonder what happened to that child and hope that he is in a better environment. Now I listen to my gut.