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

Did you not think your comment through for even a second??

OP, I voted YABU because of your apparent privileged bias against nursery and scaremongering comments about the number/frequency of stories about child deaths at nurseries. I don’t really appreciate you using this absolute horrific account as a reason why people shouldn’t use this form of childcare. If you want to focus your post on improving safety at nurseries well that would be of more value.

why didn't the child/nursery have a EpiPen for the child?

I’m sorry but someone was responsible.

I worked in a school kitchen before I retired and we knew every child with an allergy whether it was dairy, nuts or gluten intolerant and we had different areas for food prep also a list of names of who had what allergies.

It was a small school with just over 100 children attending but obviously much bigger than a nursery.

With the nut allergies ALL children were banned from bringing anything that contained nuts such as Nutella or pastries containing nuts and obviously bags of nuts too.

Someone was neglectful at that nursery.
Either the person who gave the yogurt to the baby without reading the instructions or the person who failed to point it out.

Surely there was a list of who had what allergies on the wall in the kitchen or door of the fridge.

I also worked in a care home at one time where some of the residents had to have a thickening agent in their drinks as they could have choked to death without it.
Their names were on a list in the kitchen which had to be checked EVERY day/night as it was subject to change.

This amounts to negligence.

I wonder if the people saying nobody should be blamed as they were busy, under staffed and were low paid workers would say the same if it had been their baby who had died???

I think not.

SOMEONE is guilty!

Is it better to say nursery is fine because some people have to use them out of necessity, even if you think it’s not fine? Is it ‘privileged’ to say that you don’t agree with child labour or prostitution?

To me it seems pretty clear that for children with chaotic or very poor or unwell parents, being in nursery is better than being at home. For most other very small children (under 2 or 3) it’s preferable to have one primary caregiver who loves you.

Staff ratios in schools and nurseries are shocking. I work as residential staff in a boarding school . I have often been left alone with 50 teenagers. Some of them have allergies. Im so worried that one of them is going to be sick and i wont get to them in time as i am with anothed student.

These are places that should vitally have enough staff.

Ive looked online and there isnt even an official government staff ratio guideline for stsff working with 15 -17 year olds.

So schools can technically put one staff member supervising seventy 16 year olds and get away with it!

This is such a sad story, which goes without saying. This thread is very unnecessary however and cruel towards the parents of the child who I’m sure would have had their child with them if they could have.

As if working women don’t have enough to feel guilty about, now the OP I started this thread attacking working Parents who rely on nurseries and trying to make them feel fear and guilt. To say nurseries are ‘unsafe’ and multiple children are dying? Shame on you.

Scaremongering statistically illiterate post from the OP

I agree. The children at our school all had epi pens which were with them at all snack and break times and of course lunchtime

Every time the Government, of whatever party, increases the free money for nursery care the fees increase and that doesn't always equate with improved ratios etc..

The use of statistics on MN is usually appalling, a situation where the figures that best match a prejudice are used.

Such an awful incident, allergies are so terrifying.
Honestly as a childminder I feel like I just won't risk having children with allergies anymore, I just don't think I can 100% I will never make a mistake especially with something like dairy that I have in the house and the other children eat at every meal and snack.

I don't believe nurseries are generally dangerous though. I seem to remember reading research in the past that said grandparent care was the most risky, followed by nurseries then professional home care (nannies/childminders) tended to be safest though possibly nurseries were.
I'd imagine home with parents is statistically least safe even - family homes don't have to meet the same safety standards as nurseries and childminders, and parents are busy with multiple children, doing housework, working, there are often poorly supervised dogs etc.

This was a long time ago now, but dc started nursery at 3 and I gave the key worker a health lowdown and dc's inhaler and a couple of months later (after a number of problems) when we were leaving to go to another nursery (which was equally bad, but the one after that was good...) the key worker couldn't find the inhaler, they came back with several inhalers which were not ours and I had to go into where they keep inhalers to root around and eventually find it. Inhalers can save lives, I was really hacked off that they didn't remember what the various parents who had sent in inhalers had told them about this.

This story is incredibly sad, how awful for the family.

The child might have had an epi pen but you can still die from a very severe anaphylactic reaction even when adrenaline has been administered.

The range of significant events that nursery owners have to tell Ofsted about could be anything from a serious accident involving a child to a change in the health of the manager or a complaint being made about a member of staff or a power cut or flood making the building unusable or someone vandalising the building. So that isn't going to be 75 injured or killed children! www.gov.uk/guidance/childcare-significant-events-to-notify-ofsted-about

You can have a primary caregiver who loves you and still go to nursery. Or does love equate to never putting your child in nursery?

People have competing priorities like wanting to be the person looking after their own child until they start school/until they are three, whatever, and having to house and feed their child. You know this. Most people are not in the privileged financial position to not have to earn money.

Of course that’s true although they may have more of a chance with an epi pen.

Child minders aren't "staff". They are self employed care givers who have a 1:3 ratio in their home.

Somebody should be held accountable for this. The parents said that they had a number of conversations regarding his allergies to the provider so it must have been well known. I think what steps into culpability for me is that they tried to deceive the parents by not providing the CCTV which showed them giving him the food. They sound deceptive and suspicious. Obviously I know they will be in putting out a fire mode but in cases where children die they should have needed to be as open as possible. It makes me suspicious and I'm not surprised the parents are livid. They've been let down at every stage.

Ok, but you agreed with a post that said why didn’t the child have an epi pen. We don’t know if they did or didn’t. They might have had one and used it. We only know from the article that the child died not if an epi pen was available or used.

I thought schools and nurseries were able to have their own epi pens in case a child without a known allergy has a reaction ? I’m sure that’s been the case for a few years so even if the child didn’t have one prescribed surely the nursery should have had one for general use if needed and have had training to recognise the signs of anaphylaxis?

I was talking about nurseries

I agree that he shouldn’t have been given his allergen. There is also a lot of detail missing. Was his dairy allergy known to be anaphylactic? Was he prescribed EpiPens? Did he have a set with him, if so? Did the nursery recognise anaphylaxis? Did they act promptly and call 999 (and give the AAI if he had one)?

My DC is at nursery with an anaphylactic allergy. Prior to them actually going into anaphylaxis from eating their allergen, we had no idea that it wasn’t a run of the mill hives and itchy skin, avoid this food but it’s not deadly serious allergy. None whatsoever. It escalated very quickly - and while everyone should know that this can happen, it’s not necessarily something you can deal with if it does happen and you haven’t got spare AAIs, for example.

That isn’t to say at all that it’s fine to feed children an allergen if you don’t think it’s a ‘serious’ allergy - quite the opposite, because they can and do escalate rapidly into something very frightening - but I wonder whether there was a lack of understanding of this, coupled with maybe no formal diagnosis/medication for Jude, a chaotic and careless environment, and just awful, awful bad luck that Jude’s reaction this time was so catastrophic.

To me, it seems like an example of Swiss cheese theory in action - if any one of those factors had been different, the outcome could have been very different. That said, the nursery is in control of two of those factors, and there should be some accountability for that.

1:3 U5s plus extra older children (6 children total under 8).

Do you always speak to other women like that?

Yes I agreed because I think an epi pen may have been the difference between a child living or dying but as you said, it might not.
we will probably never know if the poor baby at the nursery had one or not so it’s pointless speculating.