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!

It's in tge hands of the relevant agencies, they seem to be taking it seriously and dd never has to go back there again that's all you can do. I would talk about it locally, but going to press might stigmatise you.

Thinking about this further, this is what I would expect:

By end Friday, a letter should be published to all parents along the lines of:

• On Monday a serious incident occurred whereby a child was accidentally left in the building at closing up time. The child was not alone for long and was unharmed, though a bit shaken up. Obviously we are extremely concerned that this could have occurred. Ofsted and the LA were informed and we have been working with them reviewing all our safeguarding procedures.
• As a result of this review the following changes to procedures are occurring with immediate effect:
• We realise that this could be concerning to parents, but we would like to reassure you that the steps we have taken in conjunction with guidance from Ofsted and the LA should now ensure our safeguarding will be of the highest possible standard.

If I were otherwise happy with the nursery, I would be happy with the above. If I already had other concerns, this would trigger me to try to find a new placement.

I hope this has given the nursery a big wake up call to be more child centred and to take their responsibilities seriously

I would like to apologise to the OP.
MNHQ have said you are on the level and I did say I would apologise should that be the case.

Telling other parents at the nursery will result in the story ending up in the local papers, regardless.
This may be an unwelcome invasion of privacy, and unhelpful to staff at the nursery as has been mentioned already.
But it may also put a firecracker up some other nurseries in the area who then hastily review their own safeguarding/ child collection procedures... which may not be a bad thing.
Perhaps, OP, you could ask the LA - in return for your discretion on the incident - to send a letter to all the nursery schools in the area informing them that this incident has taken place at an unnamed school and please could all nurseries review their procedures?
At least some good may come of the awful incident.

OP, you don't have to go to the papers and do the sad face thing. Insist that the nursery owners/managers issue a statement about the incident to all parents. Let them know that if they don't, you will.

I think that TweenandTeen is spot on. If a letter like that came out about DD's otherwise excellent nursery, I would be happy for her to continue. If the news came by word of mouth then I would wonder what else hadn't been said. If I already had doubts then I might feel it was the final straw but at least I as the parent would be making the call.

Good on you funnyfoot. There were some particularly dodgy threads yesterday, and I'm sure everyone can see that you were just concerned for posters getting drawn in to something that you genuinely believed to be untrue :)

I'm in favour of telling the papers because the nursery doesn't seem to be telling the parents itself.

Sorry? it happened late yesterday.
Were they supposed to rush to press before ascertaining the facts?

I hope some of you judgey pants types never make a mistake in your professional lives that is jumped on similarly.

OPs child was unharmed.
The Nursery's procedures failed spectacularly, but not sure how.

Agree with TeenandTween : give them till the end of the week to work out what went wrong and how to change it
and to learn lessons that can be passed on to others

Put it this way, maybe there's a staff member right now thinking "oh shit, it must have been when I was clearing up that wee, and so and so asked me if the [OP's] child had gone and I said I thought so - help, it's my fault because they hadn't actually gone, I didn't know they were going to lock up based on what I said alone!".

Maybe it's not just their fault, because the person they were talking to should themselves have checked the register rather than slightly lazily just asking around to find out if the OP's child had gone? If the first person had been right that the OP's child had gone, that error wouldn't have led to a problem at all, of course. Meanwhile a third staff member could have been the one who only did a sketchy inspection of the toilets, having overheard the first two talking.

I bet it will have been something like that - three ordinary sized errors that happening alone would have no consequence, lining up to make a huge one.

I think it's not good if those staff members are too terrified to admit exactly what happened because everyone is screaming for a public shaming - you want them to report honestly what happened. Then they can have the appropriate bollocksing for their individual mistakes and crucially the nursery managers will be able to work out what to put in place to make sure the lining up of those individual holes in the Swiss cheese can't happen again.

I think the nursery should write the letter as suggested above but beyond that shaming and outrage can get in the way of actually making things safer.

I maybe a twat Beyond but I do stick to my word.

I did say I would start an apology thread but Line made me promise not to start any threads ever about anything

Glad your DD is OK. Really bad if the nursery don't make a statement to the parents. I hope at my daughters nursery they never covered up something so terrible.

I was a bit at all this, although I didn't say so. But sorry from me, too, anyway.

OP, do not go the papers. Whether it's the DM or your local paper, they will do the stupid 'sad face photo', and give it a headline describing you as 'angry' or 'furious' or some other over-emotional term. They will also want a picture of your 2 year old looking sad. The comments underneath the story on the website will not be helpful. Don't do it.

Insist on the letter, as pp have said.

There's a kind of error reporting that goes on with airline pilots that works on that basis too - no big palaver and shaming so people try to cover up mistakes, instead an atmosphere where troubleshooting happens without shaming, with everyone on the same side working to make sure the same mistake can't happen again.

I think attempting to keep it quiet would backfire massively. These things always come to light and my anger would be greater knowing they had done their best to keep it hushed up.

What would be achieved by going to the paper? The story would be brought into the public domain and those involved would have to account for their actions/comment officially (inc the police/Ofsted etc) - as they jolly well should.

Same as the woman who went to the local paper to complain she'd been asked to leave Sports Direct because she was bf. This is a story that deserves to be told publicly, imho.

I agree with Bum, contact Ofstead, LEA and insist the nursery in question issue a statement to parents of that nursery as they have a right to know.

I agree with teenandtween

so glad your daughter is ok

You can request for comments to be turned off the web story.

I completely agree with talkinpeace.

I agree with BumPotato's post:
OP, you don't have to go to the papers and do the sad face thing. Insist that the nursery owners/managers issue a statement about the incident to all parents. Let them know that if they don't, you will.
Other parents need to be aware of this and it would look much better as info voluntarily shared by the Nursery rather than gossip/word of mouth.
People will go ape shit if they read about it in the paper when the Nursery haven't mentioned it at all!

So sorry this has happened OP, hope you are all doing ok and your DD is not too upset by the incident. I would be raging beyond belief.

Parents have every right to know about this, and to make their own decisions about what to do with the information. That's one of the reasons for local papers - how much do you think local authorities etc. would volunteer if no-one was asking?

Yes, it would be far better if the nursery issued a statement and apology themselves, rather than trying to keep it quiet. I would make it known to them that they had better do that, and by the end of the week at the latest, otherwise you will be letting the information out yourself.

I think it would be wrong of the nursery to cover up what has happened here. What explanation did they give you op?

If I were you OP, I think I would ask that the nursery contact each parent by posted letter to let them know what happened, how and why it happened and what safeguarding is in place to prevent it ever happening again. Tell them that you have considered going to the local press but would rather not have to and hope that they agree the current parents have the right to know of the incident.

Tbh, if I had received a letter like this when my DC were at nursery, I would be initially horrified, but that would quickly turn to 'at last they are being transparent; and my DC are probably now safer than ever because they won't be letting that happen again!

It doesn't necessarily follow that the nursery will now fail.

Also, I would ask the nursery to let you know who, ultimately, was responsible and what steps are being taken in this regard.

What a horrible thing to have gone through