Nursery refusing to give paracetamol to children unless supplied by parents , is it normal?

[Lotus2026]

Hi, is there anyone happy to share your experience of dealing with nursery?

My child's nursery has been very inflexible all the time, with rules don't even make sense...

Our child was teething very badly, didn't sleep much all night. When we dropped him at nursery following day, we asked them to give some paracetamol for pain relief when needed, they refused us and requested that we need to supply it, their paracetamol on site is for emergency only. It was impossible to get away from our jobs on the same day to deliver paracetamol to them. We can see he was in a lot of pain in the evening.

Is this situation normal? Did anyone has similar experience?

Yes it’s normal.

I think that if you know they’re going to need paracetamol during the day, it’s reasonable to expect that you’ll provide it.

Yes we supplied paracetamol to our nursery. They also suggested leaving ibuprofen too in case needed but I said no and just left paracetamol.

Even 25 years ago this was the case

There are strict protocols. At our school, meds are supplied by the parents, locked up and can only be administered by fully trained people who also have to fill in the correct paperwork. No exceptions.

Yes that’s normal.

Yes, very normal. Usually with a two page form to be filled out every day when you leave them and the paracetamol give back to you at the end of each day.

When you say supply it, do you mean administer it or provide a supply of it? If the former, it's normal for them to administer it in certain cases if you complete a medical form - but of it's the latter then yes, I would expect to supply my own calpol or whatever. If they were in a lot of pain though, I probably wouldn't send them to nursery. It's been a long time since mine were at nursery but from speaking to younger parents it seems this is still the case.

It’s been a long time since DS was at nursery but any medication he needed had to be supplied by me in a named bottle and I had to sign it in at reception and complete paperwork authorising the staff to administer it. I wouldn’t have expected the nursery to supply paracetamol personally.

100% normal, just buy a bottle and leave it there for when he needs it.

This is definitley normal and rightly so to be honest. Any medication to be administered to a child needs to be supplied by the parents, giving clear instruction on when it should be administered and dosage etc.
At my daughters school it actually goes a step further where a parent has to go to school to administer the medication

why would they provide paracetamol?

It’s completely normal for a childcare setting to not supply or administer medicine. A school isn’t going to do it either.
I’m surprised they even let you supply it, the majority of nurseries send children one when they need calpol as it hides a temperature.

@Lotus2026 very sensible of the nursery.
If they used their own medicine and anything went wrong you would be even more upset.

At our nursery they used to have calpol that they’d give if a child came down with a high temp during the day. They’d call you to collect your child but would offer to give them calpol to help while you travelled to get them.

I wouldn’t have dropped DC off in the morning knowing they’d need calpol and expect to use the nursery supply.

In my nursery, you can’t even bring them in if paracetamol was administered (even if for teething), reason is that it would mask an infection.

15 years ago when my kids were in nursery this was normal. We had to hand in Calpol, or similar, that had the prescription label on it. This was fine, as you could get it at the pharmacy via the minor ailment service (Scotland, not sure if that's a thing in England). But you needed the prescribed paracetamol and to sign stuff to confirm you were giving them permission to administer it.

Did you expect your nursery to supply calpol and make decisions about your babies need for it ? Of course you need to supply your own and give clear instructions.

It's totally normal. My boys are 22, 19, 18 and was the same back then.
BUT.....Please tell me you didn't leave that poor baby in pain, at nursery all day with no pain relief?

Yes. We always had a bottle of nurofen and paracetamol at nursery labelled for our kids and also an antihistamine. Very standard.

Yes this was the same at ours. They asked us for those calpol sachets if we could.

If you’d read their T&C’s before starting, you’d already know this.

You should have brought your own bottle with you, or nipped to a shop/garage before going to work.

Yes, this. My kids are 18 and 21. We always supplied paracetamol and ibuprofen: we left a labelled packet at nursery together with a permission slip, and then again in the school medical centre. Both mine suffer from migraines/headaches so while it was fine to expect the occasional paracetamol dose at school for an unexpected temp, it was perfectly reasonable for school to expect to be given a supply to reserve for regular use.

Calpol is blooming expensive - having a supply to issue multiple children daily is unreasonable. Plus it makes the safeguarding/permission aspect easier - if you have not left medication in their bag, they can infer no permission to give it has been given.

This ^ parents supply paracetamol and fill in paperwork giving staff permisson to administer medication, staff administer medication as per form completed by parents. You could either give them a bottle to keep for your child to use as and when needed, or you can ask them to return it to you at the end of the day, and take it back to them the next day.

Yes, totally normal, there are really strict rules around it, when my DC was primary school age and broke his collar bone the A&E doctor said to give him paracetamol as needed but the school refused our paracetamol unless it was on prescription.