Nursery went home and left dd!

[lookingfortheanswer]

Posting here for traffic, I don't have an aibu.

Went to pick up dd from nursery this afternoon and found the whole place locked up and nobody there. After frantically calling, banging on doors, checking nobody else had picked her up we managed to contact the neighbouring school. The staff who were still there were amazing, helped us to get into the building where we found dd on the toilet, on her own, lights off and doors closed, staff gone home. It took us half an hour to get in so she was there at least that long. She was obviously very upset but is now home and fine and drinking lemonade as a treat while I try to stop shaking.

Obviously this is a huge safeguarding issue and there is no way she is going back. The head of the neighbouring school has been in touch and is organising a meeting for the morning.

Any advice on where to go from here, who to complain to? Should we get legal advice? I am so so angry!

Holy Fuck!

It's not so much not saying sorry, I wouldn't want to hear from the nursery manager that night when I was angry and wanted to look after DD. I wouldn't want to be disturbed.

We also don't know yet if maybe the manager took a staff member to hospital or had to go herself etc (this is NOT an excuse but the manager might have been doing something else last night)

There may well be an apology in the meeting today.

There's an article on nursery world today about a nursery sending the wrong child home with someone else's grandma. They were inspected and given notice to improve.

Recording of conversations over the phone is a sensible thing to do because it means you can refer back to it of you have forgotten any of it. And of course you would mention the the other person that it is being recorded for everyone's sake. It's not like anyone is advocating entrapment.

Atbeck, informing your recording totally changes the potential use of the recording and it would cease to be viewed as a personal use thing as soon as you inform it then becomes a evidence recording.

Not a problem if that's your intention but its useful to know the difference

Hello

We've had about a gazillion reports about this thread so we're going to lock it while we take a look. Please don't start a new one.

Thanks

Hello

Thanks for all your reports; we've deleted posts that break our Talk Guidelines and been in touch off-board with posters who had gone (in our opinion) a bit too far.

We have no reason to think the OP and her DP are not on the level - and we'd be really grateful if everyone could stick to our Guidelines about not troll-hunting on threads.

Apologies that we took a while to get to this one; our office internet connection has been dodgy for the last few days so we've had an unfortunate build-up of reports.

Thanks
MNHQ

looking have you managed to speak to the nursery yet? Hope they had a bloody good excuse and grovel!!

Glad to hear it HQ, I hope the OP and her DP aren't too scared to come back.

OP, I hope you and DD feel a bit better today, and update us all when you feel up to it.

Phew, thread is open again! OP, I hope you haven't been so annoyed by the troll hunting that you've left the thread, I know there are many of us who are desperate for an update, and to hear how the nursery tried to explain themselves.

There is a nursery near me and they don't always appear to be careful when the door is open. It is now being taken over by another company so I hope they would be better. The local playschool however is incredible and no one would ever get in or out, or be left alone without them knowing about it.

Righto, I'm back. Have been waiting to update, thanks mumsnet and the people who messaged me. Had a massive name change fail when I posted this but all sorted now. To be honest I don't mind, if I am outed in real life I'll get nothing but support, unlike what I have had from some of you on here. Yes, my life has been a massive shitstorm lately, yes it is sadly my real life, so kindly fuck off with the troll hunting. Or whatever mumsnet said. I have been a mumsnetter for years under different names and luckily have never had a thread before that was so dramatic as to seem untrue.

We have met with the nursery heads and heads of early years provision. They were horrified and apologetic, and are taking it all very seriously. They are going to ring round to find us another nursery place or fast track our childminder's forms so she can offer free hours. They have someone placed at the nursery for the next 2 weeks to monitor them. We have lots of phone numbers and they have promised to keep us in the loop with everything.

We called OFSTED who are waiting for a call from the nursery and LA too, they were not impressed.

The police said it wasn't really a matter for them unless social services wanted to prosecute someone, but they will keep an eye on things as they develop.

The nursery have no plans to tell the other parents, and are open this morning, which I find pretty awful. They are planning to just wait until the official reports are released. I'd be furious if I wasn't told about something like this and kept sending my child oblivious, so I am considering telling the local paper. Although I'd hate to be a daily mail sad face photo.

Thanks for the concern, dd is fine and had a good night, me and DP managed to get some sleep and are now more angry than shell shocked. Have spent most of the morning making calls and ringing family to keep them in the loop.

I would not blame the OP and her DH for never coming back to this thread, given the wankery displayed on it.

On the off chance either of you is still reading, I hope your DD is well and that dealing with all the fall-out has not been too traumatic for you. Sending you my best wishes,
DW

Aargh! Cross post! Thanks for update.

Thank goodness your dd is ok.
Do you know any parents at the nursery? A quick text with a "Goodbye, sorry we've had to leave the nursery because ..." to someone will get the ball rolling.
I would be apoplectic in your situation; that would have traumatised my dd at that age, or any age come to that!
They should be accountable and other parents have the right to know what happened.

Looking, I can't believe they're not telling other parents

I think I'd be wanting to picket the place (although obviously being with dd is the priority right now).

I would be inclined to go to the papers too if they are unwilling to inform parents. Would it be worth threatening them with this?

I think you should tell your local paper, just make sure all your social networking is completely secure first so they can't nick photos of you. I would also say unless you've been told otherwise, tell a couple of other parents what's happened. It's not fair that they are sending their children to a place without proper safeguarding measures. I just keep thinking what if it had been a fire.

Terrifying stuff.

glad she is ok

There are two nurseries near me and I know one has had issues with children being forgotten about but the other appears to be excellently run and I can't imagine something like this happening there. I hope you get the answers you need today plus what policies they will put in place to prevent it ever happening again. I also hope you find a new nursery that does give you confidence for the future, they do exist.

Thanks for the update - even the extra oversight will keep the other children safe until their parents find out what happened, so I don't know that you have to feel weird about it.

I'm glad it's all been taken seriously and that you haven't experienced any minimising or eye rolling in real life. These stories are unbelievable because working parents have to believe it's all ok behind closed doors.

I once happened to be at nursery during a fire drill (early pickup). What I saw there gave me great confidence - lots of double- and triple-checking of lists and registers, children being kept calm and entertained by staff, and so on.

It's good when a setting is good all the time, but it's more helpful to judge them by how they deal with surprises, accidents and emergencies.

OP, hope you and dd are ok today.

This thread is really educational. Not just about horrible things than can go wrong (shudder); but about the way some posters feel that they can protect themselves against horrible things by being nasty to people who have suffered them.

• it can't be true
• it must have been your fault in some way
• why on earth did you do x? Surely y was the obvious thing to do?
• general snide tone

This case is so clear cut - fear leading to hostility being expressed towards the OP - it makes me feel a lot better about some other pointless arsiness I have seen on here - understanding it makes it so much less threatening -still ignorant and stupid though

I think you should sue the Nursery for breach of contract. They are in a contract with you (in which you pay them) to provide your child a secure and safe place to play and be looked after. They did not do this. A apology is not going to cut it and Ofstead will only "give them notice to improve".

Get some legal advice and dig out the paperwork you signed when signing your child up to nursery. Read it carefully it should state their obligations and if they have breached these (which they have) sue them for clauses they have failed in and also emotional trauma.

You need to make the other parents who take their children to this nursery aware also.

I would also contact the local press, the Daily Mail and the BBC.

Childcare is so so expensive and we are paying good money and this nursery in question is not providing the service offered. This is a hot topic at the moment and it seems nursery's can charge what they want and have forgoten about the parents in all of this. Choosing a nursery is hard and leaving your child hard also. Trust has been broken here and other Nurseries up and down the country need to be aware that this is a terrible terrible situation.

I really hope your little one is ok, and you do not suffer from this too much. Make sure you look after your mental health and talk this out and don't let is make you anxious etc.

xx

I think it's quite common for the nurseries not to inform other parents. Basically, they don't need to tell you but can't lie if you ask them about it. Which is a pretty shot set up.

queenmab you are so right. I once flounced of MN (no one noticed ) because of this tendency. It's like the Madeleine McCann case (sorry to raise that) - so much easier to apportion blame than to accept that terrible things can happen to nice people.

did they explain why they closed the nursery early? I find that most bizarre.