5-year-old with broken leg called ‘drama queen’ after screaming and saying 'I heard it crack'

A five-year-old girl screaming in pain with a broken leg was labelled a "drama queen" by childminders - despite telling them "I heard my leg crack".

Millie Rowe slipped and fell at an after-school club and was left crying after a "lump bigger than a satsuma" swelled on her shin.

The after-school club at her primary school didn't believe she'd broken her leg and called her mum to come and pick her up.

The delay in treatment meant she went for three hours without pain relief for a broken fibula (shin bone) which had broken in two.

Millie's mother, Nicole Schofield, 29, said she was furious that the school didn't take her daughter's pain more seriously.

She said she was "disgusted" when she was told by the head of safeguarding at the primary school that Millie was known as a "drama queen" - which she thinks explains why her cries were not taken seriously.

Schofield, a mum of three from Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, 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."

Schofield was called to Nene and Ramnoth School in Wisbech on 29 March to collect Millie from the after-school club she attended each day.

The school said there had been an accident and that Millie needed to be picked up. She arrived at the school to find Millie sitting on a chair, crying in pain.

Millie's mother said she was told Millie had slipped on a hula hoop and hurt her leg, and had been examined by a first aider.

She had screamed and told the teacher, "I head my leg crack," said Schofield.

Schofield said that while she was comforting her daughter, a teacher had told the taxi driver to expect a girl with a broken leg, but claims she was never given that information.

She 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'."

Once home, Millie was still screaming in pain her mother called an ambulance, which arrived 90 minutes later at 6.30pm.

It was only with the critical care paramedic that someone first mentioned to Schofield that the leg could be broken. Millie was then given ketamine to put her to sleep.

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At hospital an x-ray confirmed it was a straight break of her fibula.

Schofield, 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."

She said she has now applied to enrol her daughter into a new primary school, She also doesn't plan to return her daughter to the school until they give her an explanation.

"I phoned the school the next day, I was really angry. I cried down the phone to the headteacher, who was apologetic," she said.

Schofield said she has contacted Ofsted and the Elliot Foundation Academies Trust, which runs the school, to chase up on her complaint.

She has since been told an internal investigation will be launched.

Meanwhile, "boisterous" Millie is sporting a bright pink cast on her leg for the next six weeks.

Nobody from Nene and Ramnoth School was available for comment at the time of going to press.