Another fatal incident at nursery

@TJk86 This is nothing to do with people who use nurseries under 3 and you are wrong for mentioning that because it is judgemental and unhelpful.

Tragic accidents can happen anywhere. Nurseries are largely very safe.

Only working parents can access the free hours s for U3s.

Obviously noone set out to hurt this child BUT there has been a catastrophic disaster in terms of how the nursery operate as all staff should have known of any allergies. There will have been child records detailing any allergy and all staff should have been trained and privy to such information.

It is a huge safeguarding fail and the nursery should be held accountable. It was not an 'honest mistake'. It was completely avoidable. How devastating for the parents. I would be shouting from the rooftops as well.

Well I agree for most women it is the first option. I also have a career that I could not go back to with a break of longer than a year. I couldn’t really afford to not work for three years, but I really couldn’t afford to not go back to the job I had trained in (for reasons that were more than financial yes). I was able to work LTFT, but again, recognise that was a massive privilege to take such a huge financial hit.

I also recognise that some women really value their careers, not necessarily above their children but they value the balance of having a career and a family. I think that’s ok too.

No, they died because they were given something they were known to be allergic to. Their allergy didn't somehow kill them by itself.

Being low paid doesn't excuse this level of negligence.

Yes and could happen to a child of any age as a food allergy.

True that is pointless for us to speculate but I was more pointing out that it might not have made a difference here. There were clearly a whole series of awful errors as @BayOfBucket describes.

I can’t speak for nurseries but the children with allergies at our school each had their own.
The school had 2 and all staff from the Head to the caretaker attended a training course on school premises on how to use them.

@Waitingfordoggo we couldn’t find a childminder we liked and I have a job that I couldn’t be flexible around if, say, childminder was ill

I also knew someone whose childminder tied them to a chair with high chair straps whilst they tended to younger kids - often the child was left tied up when “naughty” or just for convenience - strapped in and left watching tv. I was terrified of something like that happening. How would you know?

No setting is perfect - where humans are involved things can go wrong. But you do expect the childcare setting will care for the child as well as you would be able to - forgetting one of your children has a lethal dairy allergy is unlikely. The childcare setting doesn’t have an excuse.

A nephew nut allergy now adult with a child has stopped eating out, visiting friends. He's had too many emergency admissions.

Children will and do die he said.

> it is right that no one should be
An avoidable error killed someone
There should be a HSE prosecution, hopefully for corporate manslaughter

If there is no tangible benefit to your child being in nursery (under 3) 6-6 most days a week then why are you putting them in?

1. you have no choice due to finances - is the majority of women unfortunately and they should be afforded a choice in my view by way of longer maternity packages and better pay.
2. you prioritise your career over your child which begs the question why have them then.

It’s not privilege always. Some of us made sacrifices and careful contingencies so that our children didn’t need to go nursery until 3.

The issue is that there is a very large cohort of women who do NOT have a choice whether to work or not. Under 3s in nurseries is on the rise and so are statistics of them being harmed and worse.

Not sure it's the tax payers' responsibility to fund even more childcare costs.

Yes I agreed because I think an epi pen may have been the difference between a child living or dying but as you said, it might not.
we will probably never know if the poor baby at the nursery had one or not so it’s pointless speculating.

Do you always speak to other women like that?

1:3 U5s plus extra older children (6 children total under 8).

I agree that he shouldn’t have been given his allergen. There is also a lot of detail missing. Was his dairy allergy known to be anaphylactic? Was he prescribed EpiPens? Did he have a set with him, if so? Did the nursery recognise anaphylaxis? Did they act promptly and call 999 (and give the AAI if he had one)?

My DC is at nursery with an anaphylactic allergy. Prior to them actually going into anaphylaxis from eating their allergen, we had no idea that it wasn’t a run of the mill hives and itchy skin, avoid this food but it’s not deadly serious allergy. None whatsoever. It escalated very quickly - and while everyone should know that this can happen, it’s not necessarily something you can deal with if it does happen and you haven’t got spare AAIs, for example.

That isn’t to say at all that it’s fine to feed children an allergen if you don’t think it’s a ‘serious’ allergy - quite the opposite, because they can and do escalate rapidly into something very frightening - but I wonder whether there was a lack of understanding of this, coupled with maybe no formal diagnosis/medication for Jude, a chaotic and careless environment, and just awful, awful bad luck that Jude’s reaction this time was so catastrophic.

To me, it seems like an example of Swiss cheese theory in action - if any one of those factors had been different, the outcome could have been very different. That said, the nursery is in control of two of those factors, and there should be some accountability for that.

I was talking about nurseries

I thought schools and nurseries were able to have their own epi pens in case a child without a known allergy has a reaction ? I’m sure that’s been the case for a few years so even if the child didn’t have one prescribed surely the nursery should have had one for general use if needed and have had training to recognise the signs of anaphylaxis?

Ok, but you agreed with a post that said why didn’t the child have an epi pen. We don’t know if they did or didn’t. They might have had one and used it. We only know from the article that the child died not if an epi pen was available or used.

Somebody should be held accountable for this. The parents said that they had a number of conversations regarding his allergies to the provider so it must have been well known. I think what steps into culpability for me is that they tried to deceive the parents by not providing the CCTV which showed them giving him the food. They sound deceptive and suspicious. Obviously I know they will be in putting out a fire mode but in cases where children die they should have needed to be as open as possible. It makes me suspicious and I'm not surprised the parents are livid. They've been let down at every stage.

Child minders aren't "staff". They are self employed care givers who have a 1:3 ratio in their home.