To not complain about nursery handing our daughter off to a man they haven’t seen before

[DefendingPan]

So background: my father in law is a silver tongued fox and very personable.

He was visiting the area and decided to pick my daughter up from nursery on the way in, I arrived at the nursery to see him in the doorway, holding her hand and saying goodbye to the nursery staff.

My wife thinks we should complain because they didn’t know him from Adam but I think if we complain they’ll just say that they wouldn’t have let them leave until a parent got here cos he was still technically in the nursery and the nursery is attached to the school and I don’t think kicking up a fuss is the best first impression with the primary school.

Any thoughts? AIBU for not wanting to complain?

You are complacent and blinkered. This is a huge safeguarding issue, you should raise the issue in the strongest terms. Next time it might not be innocent. Ofsted would have a field day if they were notified.

Totally agree with this.
If I had been made aware of this, I would have to report it to OFSTED.

It is shocking that you are so complacent about it @DefendingPan
As others have pointed out, however relaxed you are about your own child being taken by strangers, you have a moral obligation to think about the other children attending.

I can't understand how he got near enough to the dc, for your child to identify him. The Nursery need to take a long hard look at their Safeguarding procedures.

My DC attend a nursery attached to a school. If someone other than a parent is collecting them the parents have to phone the office and log the persons name with a member of staff in the morning, then the person collecting needs a password and photo ID to collect the child. I can’t believe and nursery staff member would allow this to happen, are you sure he’s not down on the school system as being allowed to collect?

So, would you have been OK with it if you had arrived a couple of minutes later to collect your daughter and been told that she had just left with a man who said he was her Grandpa? Wouldn't you have been "wtf, where is she?".

I don’t think that’s ok at nursery age - there should be an authorised list only, the children are too young to know if someone is dangerous to them.

Once they get older I think it’s not such a big deal - I know our primary is pretty relaxed and I’ve definitely forgotten to tell them DD is going for a play date and they’ve been allowed to go with friends parent without issue. I assume if you notified them of people that couldn’t collect they’d be more cautious.

This is an outrageous lack of safeguarding. I would be playing merry hell with the nursery and reporting them to Ofsted.

IMO only a slack parent would let this slide.

Of course you should challenge it, respectfully but firmly. It is a massive safeguarding failure and they absolutely should not let a child go with a non pre-authorised person no matter how much the child seems ro trust them.

OP this is horrendous! You may not see it as you’re not concerned about your FIL picking up your child. But this may not be the case for many other children. It’s a huge safeguarding risk. DS has been to 2 nurseries - the first one there had to be a password anyone other than me or DH had to use to pick up, and we had to have introduced them to nursery staff in advance (eg. Grandparents came with us at drop off so they could then pick up without us) and notified them someone else would be picking up that day. DS current preschool they must have photos on file of anyone who may pick up DS so the staff can check they are who they say, and we must tell them in advance if someone else is picking him up or they’ll call us. I remember once at DS previous nursery I’d forget to tell them my mum was picking DS up. They’d met her loads of times and I’d allowed her to pick him up loads of times. They still made her wait outside and wouldn’t let her take him until they’d spoke to me on the phone and I’d given the ok. I’d been in a meeting at work (hence her doing me a favour and picking him up) and they made her wait outside for 20 minutes until I saw my phone. I felt terrible! But at least I knew they took every precaution.

To give you an idea of how seriously our school takes this issue... I recently had to pick up my own reception age child early to take him to a medical appointment. I take my child to school every day, but that only entails interacting with his class teacher and/or TA. If you collect a child early you have to go to the office.
Anyway there was a new member of staff on office duty and she wouldn't let me take him until she had fetched the class teacher to the office to vouch for me. Quite right too.

This
Shocking if it happened.
My kid's nursery /primary wouldn't have let just anyone pick up, they'd only let the kids out to a known adult.
If you wanted someone else to pick up one day, you'd have to let them know in advance.
Seriously complain, it's a blatant safeguarding risk, they didn't know who he was but released to him anyway

When my child was in nursery I had to provide pictures with names of all the possible people who might pick him up and provide a password for them to share at pickup time. This felt reassuring despite me having no reason to believe anyone would try to abduct my child or anything. I wouldn’t like that they allowed my child to leave with someone else without checking with me first.

You’re worried about the impression you would be making?! Tell me this is a bad joke. I would be LIVID. I would move them to another nursery, they would not be going back ever again.

Literally anyone could have taken your child, or someone else’s by the sound of it. I would complain to the nursery, and whichever regulatory body needs to hear about this. This is not okay. Your child may have encountered someone once, who was friendly with them at a party for example, and next thing you know they’re gone FOREVER on account of carelessness on your nursery’s part. I find it far worse that they would let them go with a strange man, as alarm bells should be ringing. But then again, I’m on the whole very wary of men that show interest in other people’s children.

This is disgraceful from the nursery. At my GC's nursery a parent had to inform the nursery if anyone other than DM or DD was picking them up, and the name of that person. On arrival we had to report in for them to check before we were allowed to leave with the GC. I would be complaining.

This is horrendous and you need to complain. Whether FIL exited the building with DD or not, they believed you should have been picking up and instead let a complete stranger into the setting and then handed them your child. Thankfully this time it ended okay but this will not always be the case for ‘charming’ men trying to get access to children.

You also need to have words with FIL about trying to pick DD up without your explicit consent. When was he planning to tell you? Presumably if you’d arrived 5 minutes later you’d have just been told by nursery your little girl had already been taken. What a shitshow.

You can complain without being an arsehole about it
things like as people have said “they would go apocalyptic ,go mental at them “ will not make the complaint be dealt with any differently
someone’s obviously fucked up they need to know if if an attitude and lack of care or a process and training problem
shouting and balling being aggressive will only make them be defensive
you can voice your concerns and ask for an explanation also point out this time it was a complete non issue but it could of been very different

If they genuinely didn’t know who he was or that he was coming, I’d certainly be complaining. Assuming your daughter is verbal and told them it was Grandad, I wouldn’t be furious but I would be pointing out how dangerous it was. Nursery had no way of knowing that the child was allowed to be around that family member, even if they weren’t lying about their identity.

If he’s ever done pickups before and they recognised him, I wouldn’t complain but would point out the potential safeguarding issues.

I told our nursery verbally and in writing (including her name) that my mum would be collecting our son, and they still called me at pickup time to confirm because they realised they didn’t have a photo of her to compare to and my son was too young to confirm.

That is appalling. You really must raise this as a safeguarding issue.

Obviously you don’t see this as the massive issue it is because a) you trust your FIL so it’s not that big a deal and b) you got there in time to see who took your child. Imagine you had turned up five minutes later to be told that someone had picked up your child and you didn’t know who.

I would have been so angry at this, my DC went to a school nursery and staff would only let them go with people who had been pre-approved by us and the policy was if you had to send someone else at any point you had to phone and let them know and then provide the person with a password for nursery staff. It seems mad that any nursery would just let some random person pick up a child.

This

Definitely make a complaint. What if another child has a relative who isn't allowed unsupervised contact and decides to do the same.

Grandkids nursery won’t hand kids over to anyone they don’t know, if told someone new is picking them up for the first time, they ask for photo of person . Definitely a concern

I would hit the roof

Totally this-they shouldn’t allow anyone if you haven’t given permission!
I would move my children

Your wife is right. Safeguarding DC is important, including in areas where ‘not a lot happens’

I would have gone ballistic. What kind of nursery gives kids to people out of authorised list??