To think nurseries are not safe for young babies

Fair enough, but just so you know, babies really don't NEED socialisation beyond their immediate family circle. For the first few years, socialisation is not the main priority. Attachment is much more critical.

There were six cots and 10 babies. It was reported that they regularly used the beanbag as a sleep space.

It was clear during the evidence that there were not systems in place to keep children safe. There were not enough staff and they were not well trained. Unsafe sleeping was normal and not corrected by more senior staff/owners. Charging the owners would not lessen this woman's sentence - but the people who allowed this to happen are also culpable.

Totally disagree. She was definitely culpable but the situation where one worker was looking after so many babies should never have arisen. If the nursery had proper policies in place it wouldn’t have been allowed to happen. Even if that meant sending children home.

Children don't stay as babies though. Sometimes parents deal better with different age groups

Exactly this! Any issues with the nursery are in addition to what she did, they didn’t cause it. The systematic problems within that nursery didn’t cause her to put that poor child down in an obviously unsafe way and ignore her for 90 minutes - in the same way the pressures of the NHS didn’t cause Lucy Letby to kill those babies (I appreciate there’s differences - murder v manslaughter - but the comparison is there). The problems within the nursery existed alongside her cruelty, and probably why she felt she’d get away with it (similar to LL).

And part of this, once again, is lack of public funding caused by government cuts.

In past years, my LA had a team of early years advisers, qualified early years teachers, recognised for their expertise, who quality assured, advised, trained and supported providers. They carried out safeguarding and SEND support visits. EY providers were accountable but also onboard with working yo continually develop.

This was based on the needs of the youngest children being non verbal and the EY profession being mainly younger and less well qualified than school teachers.

I carried out that role for a couple of years. Practice in our nurseries was mainly fantastic, but I saw young children outside with open gates, young children unsupervised in and out, babies sleeping in a cot with blind cords hanging over it, lack of care around health and arrangements for sleep.

The Early Years Adviser role has gone in terms of quality assurance, support and development. Budget cuts mean the LA cannot afford to have this role.

Absolutely not. You know nothing about me wtf? I did not marry rich! I wish! Its been waiting, sacrificed and putting the needs of my babies over my own wishes, not marrying rich 🤣

Yes she WAS solely to blame. This wasn’t a nursery worker who, exhausted and overworked, momentarily took her eyes off a baby who put something in their mouth or had an accident. What she did was tantamount to murder - you literally couldn’t have designed a more dangerous sleep situation if you tried. Nothing made her swaddle the baby, or lie her face down, or harness her, or put a blanket on top of all that to cover her from head to toe. That poor mite was effectively cocooned to prevent her moving. It was a positive dangerous act, not a mistake or a forgetful moment.

I’m sick to death of women being excuses for everything on here ‘because it can’t possibly be just her fault..’

I work in crime and have seen thousands of defendants. Female crime often has a streak of cruelty, selfish and cunning to it and they are NOT put up to it by men, it’s quite off their own back a lot of the time.

See my childminders for DD2 ( who was also a neighbour and friend of mine) used to take 2 kids to one school , one in infants one in nursery and same to a second school. Then lunchtime she'd be back to both schools picking up the younger kids. Then 3pm back to both schools again for 3rd time that day to

collect older ones.

So the baby she had there did 3 round trips to 2 schools each day

and those on maternity leave 😁

Very much so. She was not solely to blame. The owners should have been in the dock alongside her.

By the sound of it, the nursery culture influenced Kate Roughley.

That’s not to excuse her actions, but there was a reason for them.
The evidence is that the nursery was badly run and struggling to cope with the number of children they were expected to care for. Kate herself was alone with 10 babies at one point - 10 babies!!!

I’ve seen people questioning where were the rest of the staff.
We know where they were - exhausted, over-worked, paid a pittance while they tried to provide care for the children.

More to the point, where were the owners? Where are they now and why is Kate Roughley the scapegoat?
There was far more wrong here than one rogue nursery worker.

These threads don't have to be about bashing each other. It's possible to point out that there are flaws in a system without posters taking it so personally. Of course, there are good and bad nurseries. It's important that we look at why the bad ones are the way they are, and how parents can spot the issues - particularly when children are not verbal and can't say what's happening to them.

I was lucky I guess in that my child´s nursery had a very low turnover of staff. My daughter had the same main carer from start to finish every year. She now still attends for the "days without school" as wraparound care. She is 5 now, so July will be the last time she can attend. Nothing to do with the horrors described by some.

If you are already top of your career when you have your children you can’t just change it. I can’t choose to work when my university is closed! My career is my career, as is my husbands.
We made some slight changes (he starts earlier and finishes earlier, I work 4 days) but there was no way to work opposite hours.

But you can have a career and also be with your child. It just means finding alternatives- for example- since having our children we have been able to get promotions and move up the career ladder but it involved us working opposite to each other. It meant losing time as a couple, working Christmas Day etc when we could have found 9-5 jobs that offered us an easier routine. It is about choices.

Just want to say for all the women who love their kids dearly AND use a nursery, remember this is an internet thread that’s been posted on a week day, and is being mostly contributed to during working hours, so of course it’s going to be massively skewed in favour of SAHMs.

So basically if you want to have a baby you should try and bag a rich man, like some 18th century debutante? That's not the ' real world'. You didn't make a moral choice to not have children until you could afford it. You married rich.

Where is the money going to come from? You are advocating a huge reduction in the workforce. Who is going to be paying the taxes? High earners? They are the only ones who can afford to have a sahp. Will they be able to afford it if they are paying for everyone else to have a sahp too? Taxing businesses? Their productivity will go through the floor because they won't have enough staff. Women don't just do pin money jobs anymore. They can actually have careers. My NCT group had a mixture of full time, part time ( me) and sahp's. Now they are all teenagers, you couldn't pick out who had a sahp or not.

@Eastie77Returns I also think that is an advantage of childminders. Babies gain so much from being out and about. I know someone who worked for a nursery with tons of outdoor space but she said they rarely took the babies out of one baby room which just sounded so sad! (I know not all nurseries are the same.)

After seeing some childminders turn up to baby groups with their charges, and me having to jump in numerous times to prevent nasty falls, etc. while they have a cup of tea, a catch-up, and check their phones, I am firmly team nursery.

(Have to add, this is just my experience of a select group I kept on encountering in the local baby and toddler classes. Am sure there must be some lovely and conscientious childminders out there.)

I must be some kind of weirdo because I’ve been reading comments making the case against childminders because their mindees get taken out “to shops, the post office, out and about all over the place..” and that was one of the reasons I preferred our CM to nursery😂

Essentially she was doing stuff with them that I would have been doing if I’d been a SAHM. I went back to work when DC were a year old and didn’t have any interest in ‘socialising’ them in a nursery room at that age.

Alongside the occasional errands she also took them to play activities every morning and then afternoons were for lunch and home based play. We were lucky in that she was a well known CM in the area (she worked with the council as a coordinator for Ofsted registered childminders) and she often had other childminders and their mindees to play with my DC so it all worked out well.

Anyway it’s sad to see yet another one of these threads descend into women tearing each other down over childcare choices. If you are happy with your own decision then whatever other parents choose really shouldn’t concern you. Nursery did not appeal to me and I’m really glad we found an amazing childminder. Most of my friends did not want to leave their DC with a childminder and went for a nursery. Both decisions are fine!

I will add that there is a culture of parenting angst and guilt in the UK around childcare (and breastfeeding) that I simply do not see when I speak to my French friends living in France.

Of course you’re entitled to your own opinion. But you’ve come onto a thread derived from a baby dying at nursery and called parents who put their babies into nursery for any number of reasons “fucking entitled and selfish”, it’s tone deaf and quite insulting.