Another fatal incident at nursery

Interesting. I must have been lucky, we found two excellent ones without having to look very far.

England
There were almost 20,000 reports of serious childcare incidents (including serious injury or significant harm) in England between 2019 and 2024.
The number of serious incident reports in 2023-24 was 40% higher than five years earlier.
Reports are classified as "urgent" and require a risk assessment from Ofsted, the UK's education watchdog.
A study on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) found that about 20.4% of cases occurred in child care settings.

So much as the lady isn't trying to scare anyone for Britain the stats are quite high and getting higher which is sad considering these places are meant to be looking after people's children in the best possible way.

I hate these posts.

Ofsted. Ofsted inspect childminders. And they don't decide where you need stair gates.

And a friend of a friend.... 🙄

A child with allergies needs one to one.

Many more children die at home than in childcare. This is just fearmongering (with social media stoking it)

So the worker responsible was incapable of carrying out their role. Agreed.

People always defend nurseries on here which I suppose is because most people on here seem to use them.

I wouldn't trust them with my child for 5 minutes.

Ive not read the story as I find things like this too difficult to read but regardless of your opinions on childcare, stories like this are rare. Tragic but rare.

Saying it hapoens "every other week" is not only untrue but it causes unnecessary anxiety and guilt amongst parents who either have to use nurseries or feel it is right for their family.

Children sadly die every year in every setting from accident or incident – home, daycare, nanny-care, family etc. This has nothing to do with nursery.

You think some childcare worker should be sent to prison for an accident? You think blaming a childcare practitioner is going to attract better qualified, mature people to work in a minimum wage job? It's tragic for the parents, but accidents happen, especially in very, very busy, understaffed places. I'm surprised there aren't more fatal accidents (one per year is surprisingly low) considering:

• the number of children in nurseries in the UK
• staff ratios (especially during lunchtime)
• the huge boom in children with special needs (who mostly don't get extra funding for 1:1 help but who are very difficult to manage) and the huge amount of extra pressure that puts on staff
• staff working at minimum wage

No one wants to run nurseries (not an easy way to make money), no one wants to work in nurseries. My colleague left our place for an 'outstanding' day nursery and said it was awful, left after 2 days - staff working from 6.30-6.30 daily and the resultant mistakes/ behaviour that go along with that.

I agree OP, it all needs an overhaul but no idea where to start. Laws on ratios won't help.

And yet my children's well paid school teachers (and head teachers!) all seem far more cavalier about allergies than their nursery staff ever were. And the school staff seem to see inclusion as an annoyance whereas the nursery staff put it at the centre of their decision making

The net effect is women having to stay home to take care of kids, not the men.

Children under 3 are far better off at home. I would like to see a year of maternity leave for mothers followed by a year of paternity leave for fathers. That would at least get DC to 2 years old before entering institutional care.

Your 14 year old is not feeding five toddlers at the same time, while also being called away to bring toddlers to the toilet.

Agree. In fact, by two my children understood they could only take food from their parent or a trusted grown up. And their peers understood not to share food with them. In fact when my son was two his three year old best friend (a very motherly little girl) used to always ask the nursery workers "is it dairy free?".when they gave me son his food.

If anything, we just need more research into allergy cures and treatments, so that food can go back to being largely benign. It's awful knowing that food,.which we all have to eat, is also so potentially dangerous

My 14 year old would understand "dont give dairy to that child"

Let's not suggest nursery workers are too thick to understand simple instructions. Thats an insult to nursery workers.

Yep. People too often confuse 'is' with 'should' on issues like this.

I remember chatting to a childminder who happily told me that (1) social work, or whoever inspects CM, had asked her to instal a safety gate (2) she bought one for their inspection (3) she binned it the following day, as she had no intention of using it

And a friend of a friend was a childminder. Their house was really, really dirty

I think a really good childminder probably is the best option. but some aren't that great, and in a nursery, less risk of being plumped in front of cartoons all afternoon

My children's nursery staff were far more impressive than any school staff have ever been.
Not only did they have really robust procedures,.they always rang me if they had questions, and they didn't just take safety seriously they also took inclusion seriously. They were the gold standard and no school teacher /staff have come close. Perhaps we were lucky but nursery set my expectation sky high and the lack of care and complacency from teachers has shocked me again and again. As you say, given the discrepancies in pay and education you would expect the opposite!

Yeah, you need to have another chat. Parents aren't all going to follow the instructions
The EpiPen is no use if it's elsewhere in the building.
Also make sure they know not to move the child if they are having a reaction. I have had to explain this over and over to schools/teachers. Standing up, or walking around, can make a bad reaction much worse. In all the fatalities from allergies at school that I have read about teachers did stupid things like send the child to walk to the first aid room

I imagine that poster is longterm unemployed, so doesn’t consider the need to pay for things.

There are good nurseries and good child minders, and bad nurseries and bad childminders. And every shade in between.

The reality is with a child with allergies I knew I had to go with a nursery not a childminder, because what would happen it the child did have an anaphylactic reaction - the childminder would have had to have popped my child in an ambulance on his own because she could hardly leave a bunch of preschool children unsupervised

My children never had an anaphylactic reaction at nursery. They have had one each when in their dad's care, one at cubs, one at a friend's house, and one each at school

Shocked that a parent would put their child at risk by sending their child to nursery with so many different staff and so many children that are having milk products, they use so many apprentices as they are cheap labour, but parents pay well over the odds.
So sad this has happened.

Make sure your child knows that food at school is not automatically 'safe' or nut free and they cannot ever accept food or swap food outside of their own school meal.