AIBU to expect more professionalism from nursery?

[ov13]

Will try to keep this brief, I want to gauge how much I am over-reacting or not.

DS (2) nursery is a lovely setting but their management feels chaotic. Some examples:

• chef went on 2 week holiday, apparently the cover dropped out last minute so parents had to provide packed lunches
• chef has since quit with immediate effect (no notice period?) and for the foreseeable we are asked to packed lunches. We are being refunded the cost but it also means no warm meals (they say they can’t heat up any food we send in) there has been no apology, the language is more “we’re doing our best”
• last minute room closures notified at 7am on morning off, due to staff sickness
• their monthly newsletter is covered in grammar and spelling errors
• fire alarm this morning at drop off, the kids that were already there were stood outside in their socks and without coats, it is raining and 2 degrees today!

AIBU to expect a bit more professionalism from a nursery which has around 80 kids?

I don't think you are being unreasonable OP. I don't know how much you pay for nursery each month, but we were paying thousands.
I know the staff at the coal face are underpaid but someone somewhere is making a lot of money and for that you expect a certain standard of service e.g. that they have the staff to fulfill what you've signed up for.
If you're not happy with the service you're paying for, let the management know.

But you can't help a cook walking out of their job or a fire alarm these are the complaints the op has, would you want your child's nursery to get them out quickly and safely or would you want them faffing about with shoes and coats?

-chef went on 2 week holiday, apparently the cover dropped out last minute so parents had to provide packed lunches

Nothing they can do about this - unfortunate but I think it's out of their control.

-chef has since quit with immediate effect (no notice period?) and for the foreseeable we are asked to packed lunches. We are being refunded the cost but it also means no warm meals (they say they can’t heat up any food we send in) there has been no apology, the language is more “we’re doing our best”

can't do much about this either until a suitable replacement is identified

last minute room closures notified at 7am on morning off, due to staff sickness

can't do anything about this

their monthly newsletter is covered in grammar and spelling errors

This is not great and should have been properly edited and checked

fire alarm this morning at drop off, the kids that were already there were stood outside in their socks and without coats, it is raining and 2 degrees today!

• fire drill is about getting them out of a potentially burning building as rapidly as possible it's immediate drop and go so kids would be removed exactly as they are. If they'd all stopped for shoes and coats that would be highly concerning. And if they're that little it's unrealistic to expect the kids not to take their shoes off at times especially if doing art or sensory play or dress up etc.

What would concern me however, is that the quitting without notice, frequent short notice staff sickness to an extent it affects provision etc to me are clear red flags for a toxic working environment and issues with management supporting and resourcing their staff. On that basis, and because those types of issues can be lengthy to resolve especially unless management take accountability or leave themselves, I'd be looking elsewhere and scoping out other issues and talking to parents who's kids go elsewhere.

I didn't make reference to the fire alarm so I'm not sure how you managed to infer anything about it from my response.
Staffing is completely within their capacity. If businesses pay staff a decent wage then they shouldn't have such issues with staff retention. And when there are short notice issues that's when bank or agency staff can be utilised.

In fairness I also wouldn't be happy with a nursery that relies heavily on bank or agency staff due to concerns around consistency and also for safeguarding a very vulnerable age group.

Staffing is hard though, and there is huge level of sickness at the moment across schools so assuming same (if not worse) in nurseries.

They have to interview and then get enhanced disclosures before they can employ staff, members being off sick is beyond the nurseries control,not everywhere has bank staff you seem to expect humans to be robots because you are paying hundreds of pounds, and not to inconvenience parents at all.

Not that simple unfortunately.

Have you ever been in a nursery that provides food? This isn't like back in the day when it was a nice little job for someone local and at a loose end for a few hours a day, to whip up a few sandwiches, boil a bit of pasta and cut up some fruit...
It's serious business these days, especially in nurseries that provide a hot lunch. You've got endless allergies, dietary preferences and "intolerances" to cater to, where your arse is on the line if you fuck it up. It's all got to be nutritionally balanced and to government guidelines. Not to mention that the person you hire has got to have qualifications and a food hygiene certificate.

Even if you're just after someone to make sandwiches, they've still got to have all the relevant qualifications, and probably a DBS as well.

Not hundreds. Thousands.
People (IME at least) rely on nurseries so that they can go and do their jobs. No childcare, no job being done by the parent that day. It has knock on effects. If I'm paying the equivalent of my mortgage for childcare, then yes I expect a certain standard of service.
If for example the company finds that they cannot recruit a chef then change the business model. Don't employ a chef and get parents to provide lunches and reduce the fees accordingly.

I honestly do appreciate that parents work and need their childcare to run as smoothly as possible, but the op is complaining about things that are temporary or she saw as "neglectful" and inconvenient, .which they were refunded for, the op is expecting her nursery to run without any distraction to her, she doesn't want to think about a fire alarm or making lunch, surely there has to be allowances and a bit of inconvenience to be tolerated so "your children " are safe and catered for?

Nobody gets rich running a nursery. The margins are incredibly tight and parents do not accept fee increases in order to, for example, pay more than the bare minimum of staff required to keep the place going. You can't have a nursery which employes 2 full time chefs on the offchance one of them quits and for fees not to go up accordingly.

I would be more concerned if my children was happy attending.

I've read the OP, but I think I missed the part where neglect is referenced?
I maybe projecting but I read the OP as a string of exasperation. Things which in isolation may not be so bad but added together make a much bigger issue.

Do you currently or have you ever worked in childcare provision?

Big companies aren't doing it out of the goodness of their hearts are they.

https://www.insidermedia.com/news/midlands/acquisitive-childcare-giant-returns-to-pre-tax-profit-as-revenues-top-1.1bn

I have done yes from ages 17 to 50 worked in preschool childcare so have seen the changes and have had to negotiate parents, the op said the children were outside in the rain and cold with no shoes on, i mean that is coded for "neglectful".

I think we are going to go round and round about this and we should disagree.

1. They can’t really help the chef being on holiday and the cover not showing up.
2. They can’t really help that the chef has quit without working their notice period. I’m sure they will be trying their best to find a replacement asap.
3. If a staff member has just let them know at 7am that they are off sick and they can’t find a replacement and they aren’t going to be able to provide legal and safe staffing numbers then they have to close…they couldn’t let you know earlier because they didn’t know.
4. Shame about the spelling and grammar errors but doesn’t really affect the children’s care so it is what it is. Most emails and newsletters we get from my son’s nursery has spelling and grammar errors….i suspect the manager struggles with spelling and computers….but she’s absolutely amazing at looking after my kids and she definitely doesn’t need to be able to spell to do it!
5. Should we only do fire drills in the summer? I’d be pleased to see that they do (presumably) unplanned fire drills. It’s a drill to simulate what they would do in a real fire. They got the kids out quickly so they didn’t die…job done. They’ll soon warm back up.

YABU

If you have any concerns you are best off speaking to the nursery. I personally do not see anything you listed as a major issue. The sending in packed lunches thing I would expect to be sorted within a week or two. If you’re being expected to take lunches in for a month or more then I do think it takes the mick a bit. They need to try and hire someone asap x

Was it a planned fire drill?

We dont get a newsletter and I have never felt the lack of one, but if we had one littered with errors it wouldn't look professional.

Depending on where they are there are companies that provide nursery food. Or they could look alternative cover that can heat up some beans/scramble egg and butter some toast for a couple of weeks? But yes of you want hot food send in a thermos.

Revenue and profit are not the same thing. Pre-tax profit of £21 million is not very much (and it was a loss the year before) on revenues of over £1 billion.

And most nurseries are not run by such companies. I know the nursery my kids went to basically made no money at all. The fact is that they are under huge pressure from parents to keep fees as low as they can, so that means things like employing more staff than they need to are not sustainable.

So we're likely reading the OP from differing perspectives. You're probably reading it as someone who has had to put up with flaky colleagues, leading to you having more work and having to deal with complaints from parents when these things are likely out of your control to deal with and you're doing the best you can.

I'm reading it as a parent (which you may also have been) trying to juggle a lot of plates, paying a lot of money for a service that I want to be able to rely upon.

I agree that we should agree to disagree, but I don’t think you should be using the term neglectful. It's not a term that the OP used and in a childcare scenario has strong meaning.

Gosh you can't win on Mumsnet can you. A single parent earning £100K living in the South East must be raking it in but apparently £21 million isn't very much.

Plus the fact that any new chef- even a temp- will need a dbs before they start which can take a while.

I've quite a bit of experience with nurseries as I worked in them and later used 3 different ones for my own DC. Never has one closed or stopped providing food due to staff sickness or holidays, there should be contingency plans in place to manage things like this. In the ones that I worked in, the manager, supervisor and in the larger one the admin staff, where not included in the ratios and could step in to cover if needed.
There isn't time to put shoes and coats on if the smoke alarm goes off but in the nurseries I worked in we had an emergency evacuation cot that was always filled with blankets.

They're obviously having staffing issues, whether that is because the nursery is badly managed or because of the general shortage of nursery staff at the moment is difficult to tell.

In a fire you just need to get everyone out, putting coats and shoes on a load of toddlers takes a LONG time!

Quite a few nurseries are closing or can't afford to offer the funded hours, as they aren't funded enough. Large corporate ones may be able to survive but smaller more family run type businesses will be struggling, especially with NIC increases, costs going up etc