Nursery: safety, picking up and dropping off

[tryingtobemarypoppins2]

Our sons nursery is a 0-3 years open plan unit taking babies from 6 months.

Drop off from 8am is quite calm as parents tend to arrive staggered and drop off for breakfast. Parents come right into the nursery room, hang up childs things and help their child get breakfast, then leave. It works well as it is quite quiet and nice to chat to staff etc.

However, the nursery don't allow parents to pick up during tea time as they need to clean up and sort the children etc. This means that parents are allowed in at 5pm. The day finished at 6, but most parents are waiting on mass at 5pm. When I arrive at 5:15, I walk into parents EVERYWHERE, bag, children, babies on the floor, some playing as they stay later, doors opening, closing etc.

It feels horrible and some babies get upset as it feels so busy and messy.

I want to talk to the nursery about it but I feel IABU as I have no better suggestions to offer as to how to do it. WDYT?

The ideal solution would be for the nursery to know which children are being picked up at 5, and then take then to a separate area so that the ones who are staying don't get upset. But if it's open plan, that would be quite hard to manage, and I suspect parents like to see their own child's key worker when they pick up.

Safety should defiantely be managed by having a member of staff guarding the door, but I'm not sure there is a way to prevent multiple parents and their under threes being chaotic.

Is there a lobby/hallway parents could wait whilst the key worker collects the childs belongings, gets the child and brings to parent at the doorway and passes on messages etc before moving on to the next parent. Each key worker would have only 3 sets of parents to deal with surely so parents wouldn't be waiting too long. This is what I do as a CM.- I have a stairgate on my first door into my home (mainly as it stops little ones getting up the stairs) and parents come into the porch whilst i gather the child and if anohter parent arrives in the meantime- they wait! Doesn't take long and no chaos! :)

Tea time at our nursery is 3.45pm so they are done well before 5pm - would moving tea earlier help?

i don't have any suggestions I'm afraid as I've never used a nursery that does tea (ours did snack at 3pm) but I do think you should speak to the nursery manager even if you don't really have a solution. Certainly the nursery I use would rather hear about the things parents aren't happy with and try to see if they can sort it out themselves than have it carry on and end up you putting it in an Ofsted questionnaire or something. I really don't think they'd think you were BU from what I have read.

Tea sounds late

A parent should be able to arrive at any point to pick their child up safely and not made to wait. This would annoy me actually

If loads of parents are waiting, then it suggests nursery needs to change its feeding schedule accordingly