Seeing your child injured is every parent’s nightmare, but knowing there is a clear path to recovery can make the situation easier to deal with. When it comes to brain injuries, it can often be very difficult to know how long it will take for a child to recover or how much of a recovery to expect, especially in the first days, weeks and months after the injury occurs.
While every brain injury is different, there are some general guidelines that can help to give an indicator of what to expect and how quickly you might be able to get an indication of what, if any, long-term effects a child brain injury will have.
Timeline for brain injuries at birth
Where a child suffers a brain injury during birth, or shortly before or after birth, the impact of the injury is often not immediately apparent. It is typically only as the child grows and develops that any long-term effects will start to become clear, usually as you observe them missing or having difficulty with standard developmental milestones, such as being able to control their head, use their arms and legs, crawl or self-feed.
The first three-six months of an infant’s development are often critical for assessing whether there has been a major impact from a brain injury. Any serious long-term effects should usually be obvious by the time your child reaches 18 months to two years.
Timeline for brain injuries during childhood
Where a child suffers a traumatic brain injury sometime after they are born, it can be very hard to predict how long it will take to know what the long-term effects might be.
In many cases, it is likely to become clear during the first six months how serious the damage is, as well as how quickly and how much your child is likely to be able to recover. However, for very young children, it is often harder to assess how much they have been affected as they may not yet have reached typical development milestones.
For this reason, it may take years before it is entirely clear how much of a long-term impact a child brain injury has had.
Get the right support to help your child recover from a brain injury
If your child has suffered a brain injury, you need to make sure they have access to the very best treatment, care and other types of support when they need it. While much of this support can be available on the NHS, it is often necessary to pay for some of the help you need privately, not to mention the cost of specialist equipment, home adaptions and more.
Claiming child brain injury compensation is often the only way most parents can afford to give their child the right support to help them achieve the best possible recovery and give them the strongest chance of living a full, happy life. It is often possible to secure substantial financial settlements where your child’s injury was due to medical negligence. However, these claims can be complicated and time-consuming.
To give yourself the best chance of securing compensation, it is a good idea to work with a solicitor specialising in claims for child brain injury. That way you can be confident they have the skills and experience to make sure all the right details are identified and your case built and presented in the right way, to achieve a fair settlement as quickly and effectively as possible.
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