Another fatal incident at nursery

[TJk86]

I really dislike nurseries for under 3s for many reasons but it seems that they are not even safe anymore these days. Every other week a story like this pops up on the news. To think a reform is needed to make nurseries safer (Better ratios for example)? In this instance, it’s also been decided that no one will bear the consequences of this accident which must be awful for the parents.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15177433/Toddler-allergies-died-following-medical-episode-nursery-given-dairy-yogurt-mistake-parents-say.html

Pret A Manger were prosecuted after a teenage girl with a sesame allergy died due to food not being labelled correctly, why can't this nursery be prosecuted? My mum works in a school where they're really hot on making sure kids with allergies aren't given food that can kill them.

Well, one reason I never have is because I need a service I can rely on. A child minder is a single human being who will fall ill without being able to provide cover, or take holidays when it is not a convenient time for me.

And I personally don't love the idea of one single person being in full control of multiple children, probably all different age groups with different needs. Different things work for different people.

That's terrible and very sad. I also think if my child had an allergy whereby it could kill them if they ate the food, then I would not be able to send them to nursery where staff and catering changes can happen without you knowing.

Someone should be held responsible. A child lost his life and it was totally preventable, nursery staff shouldn't get away with severe mistakes just because they aren't paid very well.

This was my thought too. Many jobs that involve producing, labelling and serving food are low paid, but it's still a reasonable expectation that every care should be taken to avoid contamination and protect those with allergies. In this case the allergy was known about and there was no reason for the child to die.

The parents say there were a multitude of incidents and conversation with staff so it's terrible that the staff didn't put things in place to ensure the child was kept safe - even after multiple incidents. Having young staff is no excuse, management should have been responsible and overseeing.

Personally if i had a child with a potentially fatal allergy I wouldn't trust a nursery, especially if there had already been incidents. Having worked in nurseries and preschools though I would never have put my kids in one under 3 even without an allergy, they can't you what's going on there. It might be better than an abusive family home but what kind of bar is that - they're often far from ideal IME.

Agree. It may have been a mistake, but it's a mistake that killed a little boy. Absolutely heartbreaking 💔

I am a childminder and I think this sort of thing is less likely to happen with a cm. I am one constant in the setting and all info comes through and I liaise directly with parents. There's often a chain of info passed through nurseries. Also the staff turnover in some nurseries is horrific. Lunchtimes are busy and chaotic. It's not like that in my home where I plan and cook food for me and the three children that is suitable for all and we have a 'family' mealtime with me eating at the table with them. Ratios are also much higher in nurseries and this is likely to be stretched even further over lunchtimes.

I'm not saying mistakes don't happen but I think it's much reduced in a cm setting.

Being poorly paid shouldn't be an excuse. I worked in a cafe so had to think about allergies, (CPIG!) and worked somewhere else where I had to think about age restricted products. Both things can lead to loss of life (we had some teenage boys going round all the places selling knives trying to buy some when I was working in that last place.)

The thing is though, as an allergy parent you can't just never send your child to nursery or school. You have to trust the people looking after them. I work in a nursery and all staff have been well trained in dealing with allergies and using Epipens. We also have to do a Food Safety and Hygiene course yearly, which goes in to the best practices for dealing with allergies in some detail. There is no excuse for this tragic death.

There could be a multitude of reasons why the police and CPS think theres insufficient prospect of prosecution (the charge, I assume, would be manslaughter by gross negligence).

The Pret comparison doesn't hold, that was an entirely different offence relating to mislabelling

It is an devastating event that clearly should never happened but OPs generalisations and overexaggerations are just dreadful scaremongering

I can find specific death figures but there are about 75 serious childcare incidents reported to ofsted each week

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2641weqego.amp

It is irrelevant that nobody set out to hurt the child. Giving them something they are allergic to is serious negligence, and there should be consequences, like there were for Pret a Manger when that girl died after eating a poorly labelled sandwich. Unless you think all children with allergies shouldn't be part of mainstream education and kept at home until they reach adulthood, it's the responsibility of staff at nurseries and schools to keep them safe and take their medical issues seriously.

If there was a multitude of incidents then it's surely negligence rather than an innocent mistake.

What's it got to do with women? Unless they are single parents?

As someone whose elder child had a dairy allergy, I definitely think the nursery were negligent. They were fully aware that it was dangerous to give him yogurt so they should have taken much more care. It's just the same as letting a child drink poison in his case.

It doesn't matter how much the workers are paid, it's literally their job to keep the children in their care safe and they failed in the most serious way possible.

It even says in the link that cases involving death, which is the discussion here, are rare.

Maybe the staff were poorly trained/assigned unsuitable tasks, the processes for cascading allergy information or incidents were inadequate and/or the nursery was short staffed - that’s a failing of the business rather than the individual worker so they could bring a case against them.

That would send a message to the business, and others run in a similar way, that there are consequences to poorly managing nurseries.

Having worked with kids (GirlGuides, Scouts, childmining) I am bemused that when you have a life threatening allergy that there weren’t safety measures - eg. He was given an allergy armband to wear all day or, before meals, a register is checked and a hi viz bib popped on to highlight that this kid’s foods need to be checked and even double checked by the supervisor. I fear that there may have been some dismissiveness over the severity of the allergy (lots of us are dairy intolerant, which is far less dangerous, so the staff may not have fully appreciated the danger - no excuse of course).

Being poorly paid - we are not saying its giving the worker an excuse.

We are saying that the government should value creche workers more, pay them better and then the profession woukd attract bettee workers.

Currently creche and nursery jobs are seen as low skiled low paid workers. Anyone can do them with one certificate. So it attracts people that are not able to look after children well

We chose our nursery in part because they had self-reported and incident that they would have been entirely able to cover up. They were able to demonstrate lots of processes they had to keep children safe, and it's a purpose built nursery with really good, safety-first layouts that make things really easy for staff.

It's about £30/day cheaper than the nursery all my antenatal friends go to. The nursery in an old building with tunnel corridors, without its own garden for each age group. The nursery where my friend's allergy daughter has had dairy repeatedly (my son is intolerant and hasn't had any at his cheaper nursery). The nursery where they did a rapid transition up to the next room, whilst my son has been eased into his transition. The nursery where they freely share images of other children without checking with the other parents - ours is strictly limited.

Our nursery is currently Requires Improvement, on what are, as someone with sector experience, totally bullshit grounds. The expensive nursery has a lot of bells and whistles (a coffee bar for parents!), but they don't have a solid, grounded approach to child safety like ours does.

I am in favour of nurseries for most children, but knowing what makes a good one is a huge difference to the instinctive "feel" parents will mostly go by.

Being busy shouldn't be an excuse. It should be pretty basic to know which children have allergies.
If it had been a case of children swapping food or cross contamination it would have been devastating but some level of excuse.

But children aren't dying in nursery "every other week". The linked case was months ago.

Cars probably kill more children per week than nurseries do in a year.

CM Ratios are 1:3 for under fives.

It doesn't happen. Staff get called out to do something else. I have seen staff working alone with three year olds.

The goverment doesnt give a shit about nurseries