A schoolgirl was called a 'drama queen' as she screamed in pain following a leg break.
Little Millie Rowe, 5, slipped as she was playing at after-school club at her primary school and shouted out that she had heard her 'leg crack' but says staff did not believe her and called her mum to come and pick her up from Nene and Ramnoth School at 3.40pm on Mar 29.
The delay meant that the poor girl went for three hours without pain relief for the broken shin bone, reports Wales Online.
Her 'furious' mum Nicole Schofield, 29, says she was 'disgusted'. when she was told by the head of safeguarding upon arrival at the school that her daughter was known as a "drama queen."
The mum of three said: "They saw her as a 'drama queen' and so didn't take any notice of her. That comment was not only rude but unnecessary. Is that why they didn't call an ambulance- because they thought she was exaggerating? It makes me feel sick knowing she was in so much pain, and that the school picked her up and moved her which they shouldn't have done."
Nicole was called to the afterschool club after they said there had been an accident and that Millie needed to be picked up.
She arrived to discover her daughter sitting on a chair, crying in pain.
They told her that Millie had slipped on a hula hoop and hurt her leg but had been examined by a first aider.
While Nicole was attending to Millie, a teacher ran out to Nicole's waiting taxi and told the driver to expect a little girl to be brought out with a suspected broken leg but none of the staff had said this to Nicole.
Nicole said: "They told me I could take her home or get her looked at, that it was up to me. Before I left the Head of Safeguarding at the school said, 'well, we know Millie as a drama queen.'"
Nicole decided to take her daughter home but she continued screaming in pain on the sofa so Nicole called for an ambulance, and it arrived 90 minutes later at 6.30pm.
It was only then that Nicola says she learned that her daughter's leg could be broken.
Millie was given ketamine to put her to sleep and an x-ray at hospital confirmed it was a straight break of her fibula.
Nicole, a single mum whose children are 11, five and four, said: "Me and the hospital staff didn't believe this could have been from slipping on a hula hoop. It may have been a hairline fracture that then became a break after she was moved onto a chair, then into the taxi, then into the house.
"They shouldn't have moved her and they should have told me if they suspected a break. I wouldn't have moved her from the school. I could have gotten her pain relief quicker and treatment quicker. It makes me feel sick.
"I don't believe any staff were supervising when she fell. Half the time when I pick her up from school there's not one member of staff in the hall supervising the 20 children there."
Nicole has decided to enrol Millie into a new primary school next year and doesn't plan to return her daughter to the school until they give her an explanation.
Nicole said: "I phoned the school the next day, I was really angry. I cried down the phone to the headteacher, who was apologetic." She has contacted Ofsted and the Elliot Foundation Academies Trust, which runs the primary school, to chase up on her complaint.
Nicole says she has been told that an investigation into the incident will be launched.
Meanwhile, the "boisterous" little girl is getting by with a bright pink cast on her leg which can come off in May and getting up and down the stairs on her bum.
The Trust and Nene and Ramnoth School have been contacted for comment.
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