Another fatal incident at nursery

This can happen in a school setting too. I’m not a big fan of the current culture where children are put in nursery at a young age all day, every day and have a longer day outside their home than their parents do. However, situations like this happen mainly in the home. Best thing to do is to teach your children about consent. An enhanced disclosure just means that the person who has one has never been caught. If children are going into settings when they can’t go to the toilet, can’t sit and eat, can’t use cutlery, can’t chat about things round a table and see nursery staff more than they see their parents, then they are vulnerable because they can’t do every day things, never mind understanding consent.

I don't want the UK to become a country where we routinely expect all very tiny babies to be put into institutional care. Come on, that is a very low bar indeed in terms of what's best for a child's wellbeing. I would be campaigning strongly AGAINST that.

You have definitely never worked in a nursery. I have.

There are huge systemic and societal failings.

People want their child to be well looked after , and then society pays nursery workers next to nothing, so nurseries cant hire enough staff. If a profession is badly paid - people do not want to work there. This leads to chronic staff shortages.

If nurseries are constantly short staffed, how can staff look after the children properly?

I used to work in a nursery. I left , because what I was expected to do was impossible. I was genuinely afraid that a child would be harmed in my care, as i did not have the time to watch every child.

We know how much care toddlers need,

To to put them in a place that does noy have enough staff is dangerous!

This is happening a lot!

The government needs to respect childcare workers more, pay them more, this would attract more staff.

School Nursery staff and those in partnership with the LA have well trained staff.

Yes it was a private nursery.

Doesn’t surprise me. We had awful experiences in private nurseries, I was relieved when they started school. Swapped nurseries three times in total. Too many incidents to mention but they were all severely understaffed and oversubscribed.

That's because they have to pay for it. You'd be surprised what people will do when something is offered for free.

Goodness how tragic. It shouldn’t be possible for mistakes like that to occur,

I must say I can’t recall the last time I treated a seriously ill or injured child who became so in a childcare setting, they’ve all been from home with a handful from school.

Not sure what your ‘many’ objections to nurseries are - the majority of staff I’ve known working on seriously ill or injured children have used nurseries so that they can attend their life-saving work. I’m yet to have a parent turn to me whilst I run a paediatric resuscitation and tell me they have concerns about where our kids are.

Even if that was to happen, which pp said wouldn't anyway, the amount of people that would take a place from 6 weeks would be tiny just as it is now with nurseries who do take 6 week olds.

That was what the person I quoted thought was reasonable!

Was it a private nursery?

A 6 week old in nursery in this country is highly unusual, some nurseries don't even take them that young.

How do you know?
I have worked with a mixed of well- trained, indifferently trained, and completely untrained people.
Some did not pretend to have any interest in the children.

6 weeks? Why have them 😞

They aren’t poorly trained.

What do you suggest, OP? Professionalise the staff, have smaller staff to child ratios? Great, but parents either can't or don't want to pay for it. The scramble for ever cheaper nursery provision pushes standards down. You all should be campaigning for the government to roll it into the education system - a place for every child, free of charge, from six weeks old, proper qualifications for the staff, proper pay and stringent inspections. It won't happen though.

In my home country it’s done differently. Kids with allergies eat separately. Simple as that. In this country you will have people jumping up and down about how unfair, some ‘ism’, not inclusive and so on.
yet this is extremely effective. And everyone eats what they want. I think if a child’s allergy is so severe then the only 100% prevention would be to keep them at home. Sending them to school with something so life threatening was a risk. Not realistic but you can’t have it both ways.

crew should be able to read

Why are we assuming that women who take a job for practical reasons won't do it well? Most jobs are taken for practical reasons because most people have jobs not high-flying careers. Of course a woman with children will take a job that provides childcare and because of the UC rules she is only able to take part-time work. That doesn't mean she won't take care of the children she is looking after. That's a narrow minded, classist view of people.
My own view on this is that if a job is worth doing it is worth doing well, and if you want it done the way you want then likely you have to do it yourself. So stayed at home with my DC till the elder was 9. I still had a career (though I thought of it as a job, and not the one I had really wanted) afterwards. When I did look for childcare (so I could do an MA to qualify me for a new job) I chose a childminder recommended to me, who offered a warm environment to my DC and who would, when I started work, take them to school and fetch them, and later do the same with the school bus (since they went to school in the city twenty miles from where we lived). It worked well and I had no concerns. We became friends.

Sensible for them but not for parents who expect a good standard of care for their children. This thread is about a child who lost his life because of the poor standard and negligent actions of a nursery worker.

Hence my original point made. Do we really need poorly trained individuals like that in childcare. In an ideal world, better qualifications, better training and better pay.

Well, the reasons given by nursery workers for taking such a job seem eminently sensible to me.

Good for them. Putting their children before money.