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

More children die at the hands of their parents than at nurseries and while I understand you are trying to make a point there are many fantastic providers out there and many parents that have no choice but to send their child to a nursery while they work.

We understand your privilege, and I agree that this should have been a never event, something that simply should not have happened. There should have been an absolute cast iron approach to ensure this child had not been given the allergen by any staff member. Yes, I also do think that nursery guidelines should be updated, but that will inevitably lead to increased fees - crippling many more parents than it is now. Potentially pushing more families into financial difficulty. There is no easy solution.

But scaremongering with your ‘no nursery is safe’ nonsense on top of this absolutely awful tragedy - no thats not okay.

Its not the poor pay. Its that society does not value child care workers, when it is a vitwl job!

Finance workers get paid over 100k.

Childcare workers who are literally responsible for looking after the lives of many children get paid 20k.

Society should value children and childcare workers more!

Of course they should.

but there are people on this thread trying to say the childs death should be blamed on the young, poorly paid nursery workers.

bullshit.

how much/little you're paid should not affect how well you do your job when caring for small children.

Maybe i quoted the wrong post. I meant to talk about nurseries, not childminders

Low pay also affects under staffing. As people wont work for the low pay. Under staffing affects children's safety

If my child had a deadly allergy I would never put them in the care of low paid workers.

My toddler aged child has allergies and it is absolutely terrifying to hand her over to the care of anyone else who may not be as vigilant as I am. My instinct is to wrap her in cotton wool and keep her safe with me. However, I have to work, like most people. Like most people, I don't want my child to miss out on normal social experiences. I don't want to coddle her and make the world feel unsafe. We trust those in care to take care...it is the height of negligence to actively feed an allergen to an allergic child. It is gobsmacking that this can happen and no one is held accountable.

Struggling to keep an eye on all the children is VERY different to giving a known allergen to a fatally allergic child. Not in the least bit comparable. Staff ratios are very poor but it’s not relevant in this case. Very easy to simply not give the allergen to the child. This is gross negligence and someone should absolutely be facing criminal charges

I work in a school kitchen and we provide the food for nursery also. I check, double and triple check everything I give these kids if they are on the allergy list, even though I know who has allergies… my direct manger has started telling me off for asking all the time. But I will ask no matter what than risk that one off chance I don’t something goes wrong.

Most parents have to work. Most nurseries are also perfectly capable of keeping children with serious allergies safe despite the fact that they are poorly paid.

I find this so insulting. Do you think those of us with allergic children want to rely on nursery workers/school dinner ladies to keep our kids alive? Do you not think we would prefer to care for them ourselves? I cannot afford to stop working because my child has allergies any more than I could afford it if I had a child without an allergy. We would lose our home. We would never be able to go on holiday, she would miss out on clubs and days out - not to mention learning how to stay safe in an environment outside of the home. This idea that you can just opt out of society because your child is at high risk is not feasible...

Yes I was thinking this.

far more are killed by parents/caregivers each year so by that logic we should cancel parenting and have the kids live in institutions 👀

https://www.itv.com/news/granada/2025-09-23/boy-two-dies-after-being-found-unresponsive-at-nursery

I suspect OP is referring to this story which was just a couple of weeks ago.

My dc is allergic to nuts. Thankfully moat childcare settings are nut free but even if they weren't i doubt one of us would be able to quit working. And then what do you do when the child has to go to school? Home school? Why to deprive the child of an important developmental experience like that when it's not too difficult to just not give them the allergen?

I actually found that the nurseries and childminders dc went to were a lot more careful and transparent about dealing with their allergy than school but you cant avoid school.

All of them?

My child was much safer with me, at home. I would never have sent mine to nursery and was lucky enough that I didn’t need to.

I agree. Allergy protocols should have prevented this and someone fucked up, resulting in the death of a child. How horrific for the parents as wholly avoidable. This was negligence.

The poster said statistically safer, not all children are safer. It means that if you have 1000 children at home and 1000 children in nursery it is likely
that more children will be harmed at home than at nursery.

Where does it say that the nursery are responsible? Of course, it could be due to something similar to the story in the OP but it also could've been due to a known or unknown health condition which wasn't preventable.

That is also a school nursery, not a private nursery.

No one apart from a lucky few who probably don't have kids with allergies have said that nurseries should shut down. There is a big difference between shutting down a nursery and expecting a nursery to not give your child their known allergen..

What people are asking is that they implement robust systems and follow these systems to the letter to deal with allergies. And when rhe system fails rhey need to investigate and make changes. We made an honest mistake is just not good enough.

I never said it did.
The poster wanted some proof of kids dying at nursery, and so I shared it and noted that this might be what OP was thinking of.
It really stood out to me when I read it, because a child dying in nursery is (I had thought) so rare. So for another child to have died a couple of weeks after that article was reported, creates a feeling of frequency. Hence, I suspect, OPs comment.

Yes but if staff are rushed off their feet in low staffed conditions , you can see how accidents can happen.

I work in a school. We had a child recently that had a severe nut allergy. I luckily remembered while he was there.

But i could see, when i am dealing with multiple other children, how one day i could have forgotten and eaten a snickers bar near him or something.

We are dealing with so many children and so many problems at once.

Childminders don’t exist in many areas - plus they’re less reliable than a nursery. If your childminder is sick, or wants to take annual leave, you’re buggered. Not so much with a nursery that has set hours.

Sounds like a tragic medical incident:

In an update issued today, September 29, Lancashire Police said following a Home Office post-mortem examination, the force "remains satisfied no crime has taken place." A spokesperson for the force said: "A Home Office post-mortem examination was conducted earlier this month. Although those findings are still being examined, we remain satisfied that no crime has taken place."

"We have spoken to a number of witnesses who have stated that the child had not been left unattended, that he received immediate and appropriate care, and that significant efforts were made by staff to save the boy’s life."

www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/police-issue-update-after-boy-32575897

Are you in rhe UK? I assumed most schools are nut free in the uk. I know that kids who get a packed lunch are asked to not bring in food with nuts but are staff allowed to bring in food with nuts?

Yes I am in the UK.

Our school is not nut free normally.