Nursery refused place aibu

[Honeyplease]

Saw a lovely nursery 2 weeks ago. Looking to start my 2yo son who is currently with a childminder. I mentioned that he had tried preschool but didnt get on with it too well (he is only just 2 and the preschool had mostly 3/4 year olds) I also mentioned that I suspect him to be neurodiverse but I wasn’t sure (no diagnosis or anything) he is developmentally on track he just has odd quips.

Was given a reg form, sent it back same day. Waited.. nothing. sent another email, and another.. tried calling. Left a voicemail. Basically 2 weeks of chasing. Nothing.

Today I finally received an email back from the owner.

“The problem I have in securing the place is we already have children coming through with significant needs and I'm concerned having spoken to our special educational needs coordinator that we won't have the capacity to give your son the the quality of care he deserves just like any other child.”

I am stunned! Aibu? surely they cannot do this.

I would much rather they be honest and say they can’t meet his needs as they’re already thinly spread, as they have done, than take him in and he doesn’t get his care needs met properly.

At your son's age, I'd keep him with the childminder if I could.
Why do you want to move him?

I have diagnosed neurodiverse children and it’s unusual to be diagnosed at 2 - so if you are seeing signs then I can see why it’s raised alarms with them.
please google infant reflexes not going dormant that might be relevant to your son

I had this ,with both ds who are diagnosed autistic,..a number of schools all said they couldn't meet need and wouldn't take them

While it's frustrating and disappointing, if that nursery wouldn't be a good fit for your son then it's best to know now rather than have him go in, struggle and have his confidence knocked.

If you suspect neurodiversity at 2, has he been seen by paediatrics or his health visitor? They may be able to advise on more suitable options?

I worked in SENS. Yes additional support is needed, otherwise it derails the class activities. It's not fair on the other children Better they tell you now, rather than asking him to leave. From a private business owners point of view, it doesn't make sense to employ another worker to support one child. They'd lose money.

Of course it isn't discrimination or illegal for a nursery to decline a child they feel they cannot care for! The alternative is that the child will receive suboptimal care in an overstretched facility full of stressed employees who constantly burn out and have to quit. I once worked in such a childcare facility and the biggest victims of an irresponsible "we take everyone" policy were the SEN children themselves. I still lie awake at night thinking about how those kids were let down, 2 years later.
It is NOT a bad thing when a facility recognises its own limits and says no to another child with SEN.

You were right to share information about your child as this helps them to assess if it is the right place for your child too.

Take a step back, put your emotion aside. Surely it is better they have told you now that they would not be able to provide your child (and other children!) the high quality level of care they deserve than accept him just because its more income coming in and your child/other children suffer. Put yourself 3 months ahead where they cannot lower ratios, cannot recruit staff and you and your child dread going. Staffing and underfunding is a HUGE problem in childcare right now.

They have been very responsible here and were actually the ones to lose a payment for a child in this situation. They could have just lied and said they were full!

I sat in a meeting recently on how to help improve outcomes for vulnerable kids. The focus was all parent blame for the poorer kids. I raised SEN as vulnerable and yes we discussed them but the general opinion in the room was they won't take on send kids because it's not profitable. Said with no shame in a meeting set up by the LA and no one was appalled by what was said.

I can see it from both sides as I work in early years and I'm parent of a send child with significant needs. I can't get childcare. I now can't even get him a school place. When he was small I had to haire an assistant to keep safe ratio for his needs I was earning £2 a hour after I paid all expenses. I did this as it was my son. Who would do this for a child not their own?

The problem isn't the nursery the problem is the government shutting in the most vulnerable to save money

In one of our cohorts we currently have a high number of SEN children and our staff are stressed and struggling to meet everyone’s needs on some days. We couldn’t manage another child right now with additional needs in that group. However in the intake below we would probably be fine to accept a child with SEN as there are no others currently with extra needs. The nursery has been honest with you by saying they can’t currently accommodate your child. It isn’t cherry picking it is what can be managed safely within the current cohort. Nurseries can refuse a space if they can’t meet a child’s needs although it isn’t considered good practise it is realistic.

I’m not sure I agree. Any tribunal would always put the needs of the child first. If a child is rejected from preschool after preschool, is it right that he should not be educated at all? Any specialist placement would have huge waiting lists. And what I’d bring described here is only suspected SEN.
If a nursery is rejecting SEN or suspected SEN placements, they they need to advertise their ethos as exclusive or selective. And I bet they don’t.

Poorly resourced nurseries are not the fault of the child. Funding needs to be better, training needs to be better, nurseries need to adapt to their changing cohort. Less meaningless twinkl signs, paperwork, more resources like widgets etc, more focus on speech and language development.

I don’t know why you’re trying to diagnose him yourself? Surely it’s better to get him in a setting and they can flag if more support is needed. Or take him to the GP and get it formalised.

of course if you say he’s neurodiverse and they haven’t got spaces for children with extra needs they can say no

Why can’t he stay at the childminders?
He's on track developmentally with a few quirks-I wouldn’t just assume he’s ND with solid evidence ( unless you’ve omitted something significant)
He’s only 2 fgs ! lots of very young children struggle with settling into nursery/ pre school and find them overwhelming.

To those saying it's discrimination, where does this end with private businesses?
I run a business, a swim school, I want to keep my prices affordable because I feel passionately that every child should have access to swimming lessons.
I would need to reduce my ratios for every child with special needs I take.
To accommodate this I would need to put my prices up.
Am I then discriminating against poorer families who are now priced out of my lessons?
This is really really difficult at the moment, as others have said, the numbers of children with SN are surging for whatever reason atm. It isn't fair to them. But it isn't fair on the business only either. And the end result is - small businesses will simply close if they can't turn a profit.

why would you want to force your child into a nursery that is being honest and telling you they can’t support him the way he needs? of course they’re being reasonable

This, just because it makes it difficult for the setting doesn’t mean it’s legal to refuse a child on the basis of possible SEN.
That said it’s also important to think what this says about the setting and whether they can meet his needs. You want the best for your child and they are saying they can’t do that.

Unfortunately being poor isn’t a protected characteristic where as having a disability is and legally any service provider needs to show they have made reasonable adjustments to accommodate those protected characteristics. You would need to be able to show why it is not possible to make changes needed.

@arethereanyleftatall
I think because - yes, every child should have the right to learn to swim. In principle. : that should be the ethos. The child is the priority, and I think the business is secondary. The business needs to change to support the cohort - you can’t exclude children - who for whatever reasons (Covid etc, etc) have needs. We as adults accommodate this by : better training, adapting, voting in a better government.

If children are refused swimming lessons/nursery placements , then they don’t/aren’t allowed/never learn to swim. That’s not fair.

they cannot do this if he receives a funded place.

call your local council early year department and seek advice.

You aren't thinking of this from the small business owners perspective. I need to feed MY children. To do this I need to make a profit. It isn't putting 'a business' before 'children' - it's putting the needs of my children first. Doesn't everyone do that?

Just for the record - I actually have been just taking the financial hit myself to date. I'm lucky that I can afford it. Other small businesses will fold. Do people really want only massive corporations left?

They are being honest I don't see what the problem is, your child may not have needs it may just be the developmental phase it's very tricky between the age of one and five.

My worst experience was a private nursery that said yes, then changed to no on the last day of settling in. The day before my return to work.
I was grateful in the end for the more upfront no answers. A couple just ghosted me.
It’s not easy with SEN, but my biggest advice is go for where they fit in and places that want them. Forcing them into places that aren’t keen just leads to moss being failed.

They may feel they don’t have enough staff or staff with enough sen training to accept another child who has extra needs, they have ratios to keep to and safety of all their children to think about. Personally I’d keep quiet about that when looking at nurseries- you don’t have a diagnosis and it could just be little quirks not actual sen. People are so quick to label these days (I work in childcare) The childcare sector is over stretched, underfunded and loosing staff as you can earn more working in a supermarket. The government funding is woefully inadequate and with the new funded hrs lots of providers simply won’t be able to cope

I appreciate you could tell your child had SEN needs but the OP states quite clearly that her child has met all their developmental milestones.

You, like me, noted when our children did not and sought advice. We didn’t unilaterally label them as ‘possibly autistic’ and advise a childcare provider of this without diagnosis or support from a health visitor or clinical professional.

Re the disabilities act, if the child has no diagnosis (ie no diagnosed disability) then it cannot be guilty of discrimination.

TBH I think they decided that the OP, as a parent, would likely be a problem parent (as an ex teacher and child minder, you spot them immediately) and felt that perhaps theirs was not the correct setting for the child accordingly. It’s a relationship-based business and if they felt that the parent-child dynamic would impede their ability to support the child or form a positive relationship they were within their rights to decline a space. I’ve done so on this basis as a childminder.

Unfortunately you will experience more of this as he grows up, if he is ND.

I was fortunate to find a SEN nursery for my ASD son and get him an EHCP and then a school solely for autistic children - but he has had rejection after rejection from holiday camps, activities, clubs etc.

It's shit and I remember feeling outraged when it first happened, I'm used to it now.