Anyone else’s nursery pulling this stunt at the moment?

[Skinnermarink]

Let me preface this by saying I KNOW nursery work is hard and it’s long and it’s woefully underpaid. It was a long time ago but I’ve worked in one myself. I can totally see why there’s a recruitment crisis with it at the moment.

DS is one and we thought we’d found a good nursery. Long established, nice staff etc. I wasn’t keen on sending him at all because I wanted him at home with me but it’s not financially viable. So four days a week he goes, at a cost of £1100 a month.

The amount of calls we’ve had to go and collect him over something or other have ramped up in the past eight weeks to the point of ridiculousness. They include

-a temperature that we never managed to catch at home and he was completely well. That happed 3x
upset stomach that magically we never saw at home, but came with a 48 hour exclusion. This went on for weeks. At worst he had a few soft nappies, certainly nothing anyone could describe as diarrhoea. I eventually got a stool sample to clear him for this at their insistence before they’d have him back. He missed days and days of nursery for this.

Teething pain which meant he was ‘not himself’ (I didn’t collect for this, as he was playing, eating and drinking, and I told them I wasn’t going to collect for something as flimsy as this and they were welcome to give calpol)

a head injury that we had to come immediately for or they’d call an ambulance, threw myself into a taxi in sheer panic to find him running around with a tiny bump on his head, but they wanted me to take him home to be checked out and not return him for 24 hours. I’m not under reacting by the way, it really was in no way anything other than a typical toddler bump.

This week has been the final straw. He had his MMR vaccine last week and developed a few tiny spots- a side effect listed on the NHS website. They called and said we had to collect and he couldn’t return today unless a doctor cleared the ‘rash’.

Luckily our GP is fab and had him in this morning, cleared him in seconds with a note so I took him straight to nursery because I had to get to work. There were already 9 babies in the room, mine would take it to ten. 3 members of staff. They looked pissed off and a bit panicked and said he couldn’t come in unless I had a doctor’s clearance - which I produced. The manager was called down who said they had staff sickness but she would be covering herself until an agency worker arrived.

I felt shit leaving him to be honest but it’s no exaggeration to say our jobs have been on the line due to dropping things to pick him up, staying off with him at short notice etc. we’ve used practically all remaining annual leave we had for Christmas so that’s scuppered plans to visit family. We don’t have any outside help, it’s just us, no grandparents to call in an emergency etc.

So I want to know has anyone else been in this situation? I’m not being paranoid (although I did tell myself I was at first) and I honestly think they have to pick babies to send home to stay within the ratios and then hope they stay off the next day.

I’ll add that DS has been genuinely unwell with things on occasion and of course we’ve kept him off. But we are at our absolute limit now and have pissed hundreds up the wall on unnecessary pick ups and days off.

Think I have found an alternative setting and are looking on Monday, but they have no availability until January.

I work in a nursery and we just ring and ask if they can have calpol and if the temperature doesn't come down or they are really not themselves then we would ring, and only sent home after 3 loose nappies. We have never sent a child home because we are short staffed.

@SallyAnnPanakapan Can I have what you're smoking?

My DS old nursery were a bit like this. He had spots on his bum once, they sent him home. Wanted GP advice, so I got some and they ruled out chicken pox and said he's fine to go in. They still didn't want him in.

It is so hard when you need to work, and still have to pay nursery even when they're not there. Luckily i get sick pay but my DP doesn't. So i had to have a fair few days off over the years.

Good news is he's 2.5 now and he was constantly ill up until the last 6 months or so, even when he wasn't, nursery found something. He's been well for ages now. 🤞

Yes my kids are in nursery at 7am. Staffed by strangers and felons who stare at them glassy eyed. All so I can indulge in the relentless empty pursuit of money. I’m a husk of awl an, happy to abandon my kids to Gangsta Daycare. Oh yes I also worked in a Trust that had 7day a week nursery, that’s Sat and Sun the strangers can ignore the kids

This is freaking hilarious 😂 😃 😄

I’m a husk of a woman even…all that avarice I can’t spell
My children first word was Money! Not mummy

Our nursery recently wrote to us saying children with cold symptoms should not attend, these include runny nose, sneezing and coughs. 😂
They haven’t enforced that yet. My DS would be off from September to March. Then again in the Summer!

I use a CM. She is extremely pragmatic, and has had 1 day sick in 5 years, and she arranged cover with another CM locally.

The only time she has rung me to collect is when one of mine vommed all over her floor.

I worked in a nursery which often had numbers of children over the legal ratios. It was horrible.
The managers were constantly ‘accidentally’ booking in more children than allowed and telling us to suck it up.
I think people generally have no idea what goes on.

Do we use the same nursery, OP? Absolutely they do it. Pure laziness and looking for excuses to do less would and/or out of ratios, it's despicable. I don't hear of friends going through this with other nurseries. My child was well every single time

@Zone2NorthLondon 😂👏🏻

I had the opposite problem working in a nursery. Nothing would persuade our manager to send children home. Child throwing up like a scene from the exorcist, of course he can stay!

My nursery is 50/50 depending on the staff that's in the room. His key worker tends to muddle through a bit more but others call me to pick up. He had a very slight temp 38.8 and I had to collect. He wasn't poorly at all. He was bouncing around when I picked him up. They won't give calpol at all. A few times they have mentioned he's been loose but only at pick up. I've had to collect him twice since he started in June. But had been off for three weeks that I haven't sent him in due to being unwell the day before ect.
I would absolutely call them out on their staffing ratio tho.

Yes! This sounds like our old nursery and we knew they had staffing issues because they did one worse and would just close rooms with only hours notice because they couldn’t staff rooms with the legal ratios.

Made the decision to pull her out at the beginning of the year but had to wait for September for a place. Best decision ever.

Good luck with yours!

@SallyAnnPanakapan sorry we can't all be sahm/sahd.....you know others actually rely on us to you know do our jobs....which in my case is to literally save life's.......🙃

I have had exactly the same treatment with DS1 back in the day. At least two phone calls a week to collect him or not bring him in. ‘Rashes’ ‘Diarrhoea’, ‘accidents’. All the same unprovable or overstated things. Loads of doctors’ letters. Lots of moral blackmail. It came to a head when I had just got off the plane in Munich one morning, around 10am. His grandparents had been deputised to collect him at 6pm, it was a 2.5 hour drive from their house and they were busy beforehand. ‘He has a spot on his chest, can you pick him up?’ ‘I have literally just got off the plane in Munich, do you want me to buy a new ticket and fly back straight away? It would have to be full price business class and I probably won’t be able to get to you until mid-afternoon.’ ‘Actually no, he is alright really’.

When he was collected that evening there were zero ‘spots’ on him. We then realised they had been stringing us along this whole time, to make their workload easier.

So if you stop being available, they will stop ringing you and pick someone else ;.)

I have to stress it really, really didn’t seem like that kind of place when we chose it. The owner showed us around herself, she was happy to answer all questions, very knowledgeable on all the things I asked her about, the staff seemed pretty peppy and not overwrought. I guess you can never really know, but I truly believe their standards just slipped over the last few months as a couple of staff members left and they’ve not been able to recruit any replacements.

I was gutted when I dropped DS off the other day as it just felt like crowd control and just doing the minimum to make sure all the babies in the room survived the day. It’s certainly not the nursery we were sold. I never speak to other parents there unfortunately as we all seem to drop and pick up at different times it’s a bit like passing ships.

It is a total nightmare as while DH can just about juggle WFH with DS, I am not able to work from home at all and so have burnt through annual leave and I don’t get paid sick days.

The nursery we use phone a lot.

I've found they phone fishing for us to collect.

They'll ring and say No2 is a bit quiet or has a bit of a temperature. We now say. Awwww thanks for letting us know just keep an eye on her, or "yea she's been like that for a few days, she'll be fine".

I think a lot of people would just say "oh okay we'll come and get her".

But that said in the first 12months they go get EVERYTHING at nursery. I'm a school governor and those kids who go to nursery have significantly less absence in Reception and yr 1.

Sounds pretty standard really, your DD should have been required to have a covid test if she had a temperature, that was the government guidelines. Even with a negative test, surely you can’t expect them to have your daughter in nursery with a temperature?

Thanks @Mehmeh22 and @Skinnermarink I am to please, being absent from my children 12 hours a day gives me time to think of some quips.

I'd start taking sick days instead of annual leave.

I’m willing to bet a lot of money they are short staffed and are doing this in the days they have to many children for the staff . Start by making a formal complaint to the manager and if I were you I would find another nursery.

Agree with PP at nurseries can be so different! Had to pick up DS1 loads at the first one he was at. My favourite was the day after his MMR vaccine, I’d told them he might have a bit of a reaction to it and then they called me saying I had to pick up because he had a fever. I said it was probably the vaccine but he wasn’t having any of it and said I had to pick up. Got there and he (the nursery worker) told me very seriously that DS1 had a temperature of….37.9.

Nearly turned around and left again without DS1.

However the second nursery we’ve had him in are absolutely brilliant, they’ve only called once and that was at 3pm to ask if we could pick him up a little early as he’d been limp and not himself all day and had had several loose nappies. We have it so good we want to stay in this area even though we need to move to a bigger place and that’s not affordable here…

@Thefaceofboe Every time she had a negative covid test and she was fine in herself. Toddlers have temperatures for all sorts of random reasons, teething being one of them.

Of course if I remotely thought she had Covid, I'd have kept her off. Incidentally, she's never had it, even when the whole household had it