My child has been left out of every trip and outing with the nursery

[CuriousGe]

My DC has been going to nursery for a year.

The nursery takes the children on regular outings and trips to parks, garden centres and places like that. Pictures and snippets of videos from these outings are posted on the nurseries Instagram page often.

It came to my attention that my DC has never once gone on one of these outings or gone anywhere with the nursery, but the captions on the videos state that "all children at * nursery get to experience the great outdoors with them" and other similar captions portraying inclusivity.

After another of these videos popped up on my newsfeed I sent a polite message and asked whether those trips are only scheduled on certain days as my LO hasn't had any of those opportunities yet. They read it but I got no response.

I'm aware that my DC can be quite a handful but they do have special needs, as do %80-90 of the other children at this particular nursery.

AIBU to think it's unfair to include my child in any of these trips?

@sweeneytoddsrazor

If it is just local little trips, do you not just sign a general consent form when they start? Have you actually signed anything giving them permission to take him?

I do believe I've signed one, but can't be one hundred percent sure.

When I signed him up I had to give consent for a handful of things, pictures on social media, first aid to be given etc.

I'm pretty sure trips out were included in those forms but I'll have to double check.

They have never mentioned trips out or consent since he joined, I would think that if there was something else for me to sign and they wanted to take him out they'd have raised it.

Thank you ladies, I'm pleasantly surprised by the responses I've got (with this being AIBU)

Much appreciated.

It can be hard to be objective when it's your child can't it, as naturally we are inclined to want them to be treat the same as every other child.

I teach in an SEMH secondary school and am in charge of educational visits. We do have a couple of students (around 2 out of 60) whose behaviour is so extreme and unpredictable that they cannot go. This involves doing a detailed risk assessment in conversation with the student and parents/carers as well as collecting evidence (witness statements etc) of unsafe behaviour. By unsafe behaviour I mean things like running away (particularly towards traffic) violence, using racist etc language towards members of the public.

If your son has been risk assessed to be unsafe on visits, you should definitely have been made aware of this and given the opportunity to help make things safer/easier. He should also really have been given the chance to try a shorter visit to gauge his behaviour. We take all of our Year 7s and new students to the corner shop and the local cafe etc so we can get an idea of their behaviour in public.

Curious I get that. My son has asd and we've been opposite before as well where they've been dog eared determined to include him when it's things I know he won't cope with!
Many a time we've used the "I'm happy to collect him if it goes tits up" plan b

Good luck

"I teach in an SEMH secondary school and am in charge of educational visits. We do have a couple of students (around 2 out of 60) whose behaviour is so extreme and unpredictable that they cannot go."

I can't see that applying to any nursery age child though. They are too little to cause that much of a problem as long as there is enough staff support. If there isn't the
nursery should be doing something about that which the parent should know about.

I teach in an SEMH secondary school and am in charge of educational visits. We do have a couple of students (around 2 out of 60) whose behaviour is so extreme and unpredictable that they cannot go. This involves doing a detailed risk assessment in conversation with the student and parents/carers as well as collecting evidence (witness statements etc) of unsafe behaviour. By unsafe behaviour I mean things like running away (particularly towards traffic) violence, using racist etc language towards members of the public.

Thank you for your contribution, it's interesting to hear from somebody with your experience.

It's totally possible DS could be deemed a flight risk, we mitigate that when we take him out by keeping hold of his hand or using a wrist link.

When we're at a play park he's easy to manage as he gets so engulfed in the swings and slides he has no interest in running off.

Most of the children at this setting have special needs so I'm sure it's not something that's only a concern in DS' case.

Many a time we've used the "I'm happy to collect him if it goes tits up" plan b

This is something I would say too

Is he very young? My son wasn't included for ages because although tall, he is June born and their insurance didn't cover him until he was four.

Our nursery tends to do trips on days DS isn’t there (and takes the photos on a day he isn’t there as well! But that’s a different gripe).

They do cycle them around though, and will allow children who aren’t attending on specific days to pop in for the trip with a parent. So we went to the fire station on a day he didn’t attend, and DS and I met them there. There was a Halloween dress-up party on a day he doesn’t attend, and I took him in for an hour to have a dance in his outfit. They know children don’t like to miss out, especially once they are old enough to talk to each other!

They organised the pre-school prep classes (one hour once a week of sitting nicely at a table for an activity, from what I can gather), on a day he doesn’t attend. I pointed that out, and they moved it to a day that everyone was there.

To expand on my last post, whilst it's totally possible for DS to be deemed a flight risk they don't actually have any experience of that happening iykwim.

For example, I wouldn't feel comfortable having him walk freely alongside me down the road without holding my hand and I'd be totally honest about that - but when he's at the park he's brilliant.

If they took him on a trip and found he wasn't manageable, tried things to mitigate that and spoke to me, I would be understanding.

As it stands they haven't given him the opportunity to see whether he's manageable or not.

My gut feeling is they've made a decision based on the fact he can be a bit challenging at nursery (like most children with SEN, mind)

Hopefully I'm wrong and we can work together to have him included.

He's 3.4, the children that attend the nursery are all aged between 2-5 and I've definitely seen the younger ones in the videos.

Its nice to read that alot of nurseries work to be inclusive of the children who aren't in for scheduled trips, I think that's lovely.

Is it a pre-school or an under fives childcare nursery? I'm wondering if it's just the pre-school room that goes out? If it is certain days then it might be the day when a student or volunteer is in so the ratio is better?

Hope you get to the bottom of it. I was most upset when my eldest's nursery refused to move him up to the pre-school room after his summer birthday because he was moving to a school nursery in the September and missed out on trips like this, and understand your frustration.

It doesn’t seem fair to me. It also doesn’t seem right that they haven’t responded to your enquiry. If they don’t respond by the end of the week then I’d be seriously rethinking if this was the right place for our family.

YANBU

Are the trips happening when your child is not in? Not right still though. All children should be involved or even just invited! You say that 80-90 percent have special needs? Is it a specialist nursery?

I have an autistic DS. Not many trips happened at his pre school. A couple days out near the end but I didn’t send him as didn’t feel he was ready! The trips were to the beach and he had no sense of danger and would jump
In any water at the time 😂 they did always invite him though, I usually just declined. Looking back now I probably should have agreed to it but I was an over anxious mum at the time.

He has always been included in primary school though.

It's a privately run nursery, not attatched to a school. They cater predominantly for children with additional needs, ie autism / learning disabilities.

The trips were to the beach and he had no sense of danger and would jump
In any water at the time 😂 they did always invite him though, I usually just declined. Looking back now I probably should have agreed to it but I was an over anxious mum at the time.

I totally get it!

I was very much the same with DS (overly anxious) but nobody else knew that

DH has took DS to the barbers this morning for a hair cut, it's just under a mile down the road and he walked nicely there and back (using a wrist strap) and managed very well. I'm certain he'd be ok on little outings with the nursery, especially when there's multiple adults there not just the one

Yanbu I don't buy the reasoning he might be too disruptive/safety it's a special needs nursery they are trained to deal with these situations but if they can't accommodate all the children like they claim they should be rotating the children left out.
I would also be suspicious if all these trips happened where always scheduled on certain days when specific children don't attend. That doesn't sound inclusive to me, rather it would appear manipulative to disguise that they aren't following guidelines and disability laws.

I can only think it's a staffing issue I've worked for a number of years with adults with severe behaviour which challenges things like stripping in public ,shouting etc and we have always been able to go out. It just took planning and adapting

Something a little bit from left field.

But it may be that the person that organises the trips and is responsible for them doesn't work on the days that your DS is in nursery.

Have they definitely been going recently? My DC’s nursery has only just started them again as of April 12, I don’t think she’s been on an outing since last March.

They should definitely be changing the days around so children who attend on different days get an opportunity.

I did have to sign something when DC started to confirm we were happy for them to go on the outings (rather than the other way round, signing to say we didn’t want it, if that makes sense), worth checking that’s not been accidentally missed.

Hope you get it sorted, mine has always loved the little trips out they go on.

It could also be that your message has taken them by surprise and they didn’t realise that it had worked out so that he had missed everything. They could be double checking that he hasn’t been on anything and intending to talk to you about it next week.

Just phone up and ask nicely. Let us know what they say. It could be that they need another member of staff because he has additional needs? Or they can only go on certain days because they have the highest ratio of staff? Call and ask them.

Let us know what they say.
All kids under 4 are bolt risks, so I don't know why they would leave him out.
Especially if nursery are totally used to dealing with (their specialism) kids with wide variety of SN.
Maybe you never got the slip of paper allowing him to leave site, and they assume you not returning that bit of paper means you don't want him going out.

Is it possible you did not sign the consent form when they started

If you’re DBS checked then I think the nursery would be happy to have you come along.

I would go into the meeting with aim that it becomes nursery policy to tell parents if their child isn’t ready for day trips and try to work towards including the child in outings. There’s a chance that all outings will be cancelled as they might be unable to take all the children (due to differing abilities) but also they can’t deliberately exclude children (due to nursery policy). Sometimes nurseries get around this by timetabling outings on a day when the staff ratio is higher or the more demanding kids aren’t in.