AIBU to expect more professionalism from nursery?

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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?

It sounds chaotic but maybe they've just been a bit unlucky with these situations

They can't control the chef suddenly quitting and the cover dropping out, so it's either ask parents to provide meals or children starve?

They also can't control staff sickness, would you rather the staff came in ill and passed the bugs on to your child? Or worked at an unsafe illegal ratio to keep the room open?

The newsletter is the only thing that can be controlled, our nursery notifications from various staff often had spelling mistakes, I'm not sure if some staff were dyslexic or they were just rushing trying to type things up during short breaks

@JLou08 they had a contingency plan for chef going on holiday, they got agency staff in but then they didn't work the required period.

If nursery is open pretty much all year then staff will go on holiday whilst the nursery is open.

Other contingency plans might be to use managers to cover other staff, but certainly in the schools I deal with the number of staff off sick is a nightmare at the moment and SLT are having to cover many roles. So if the same in this nursery then they are going to prioritise ensuring ratios are maintained not cooking lunches

This is what a business continuity plan is for, any service such as this should have plans in place for what happens when these issues arise, not necessarily to run the service as normal but it also shouldn't just be whatever they can pull together in a panic on the day. Don't think they could do anything about the fire evacuation though.

@Beedeeoh nurseries have to maintain ratios so is always difficult if staff go off sick, you can't just throw 2 groups of kids together as ratios might not be correct, and they obviously need an adult in the room, and will also need someone with adequate first aid training, safeguarding etc in the building. They may have a manager who can cover, and will obviously have agencies they use for cover staff but it can be really difficult to recruit in this sector at the moment, so agency having any staff available at short notice isn't always possible

Whilst not having a chef they have tweaked the food option available and amended fees accordingly.

Yes, this is what I would expect from a professionally-run nursery.

I pay nearly a second mortgage for one kid - I definitely expect them to be able to rustle up a blanket (even if all the kids have to huddle up in it) as part of their emergency evacuation plans. It was snowing where I was today! If there really had been an actual fire (not just burnt toast etc) the kids could be standing around for an indefinite period of time!

Regularly not being able to find cover, people quitting with no notice etc might not be 100% in their control but points to some systematic problems in their work environment.

OP, what are the other options around you?

The nursery does sound chaotic, but:

Chef on holiday and leaving without working their notice . Not a lot the nursery can do. If they bring in a temp chef they will have to have an enhanced DBS, be used to catering for young children and prepare nutritions, healthy food for meals and snacks that meet current EYFS guidelines on this. The chef would also need to have a thorough understanding of any children's dietary requirements/ allergies and intolerances . Plus a food hygiene certificate.

The nursery ( if London based) should be able to source a children's food company that will deliver hot or cold lunches . They will not want to do this though due to cost.

Fire Alarm. If it was a drill drop off is not the ideal time to do so. However, there is the expectation that nurseries carry out fire and lock down drills regularly. Not having shoes and coats on not ideal, but our policy is that we have to evacuate or lock down the nursery in two minutes. Every fire drill or lockdown and how long it took to evacuate is recorded.

Room closure, again not ideal, but this would have been a last resort. The two year olds are on a1:5 ratio, but if the nursery do not have capacity to move staff or children around because babies need 1:3 ratio and over 3's 1:8 unless the nursery has a qualified early years teacher and the over 3s ratio is 1:13 when directly working with the children. Without these ratios the nursery would have no option, but to close they would legally not be able to operate.

Many nurseries do not like paying for agency staff and not all have their own bank team. Again, our policy states that agency staff, unless level 3 qualified and with a member of permanent staff cannot do nappies / toileting or sleep checks. That would take 2 members of staff out of the room and it would not be in ratio. This is a safeguarding decision.

Newsletter- no excuse for spelling or grammar errors. This should be proof read by the manager .

Nursery staff are human they are entitled to holiday and they get sick because of all the bugs that frequently populate nursery.

Yeah, I work in daycare. LOL to having a staff member free to whip up several rounds of sandwiches.

Yes, the daycare I work at is a non-profit and believe me, nobody is getting rich

The point being, which is not hard to understand, that even your example of nursery's "raking it in" shows that, well, they aren't.

Surely you can see the problem here.

Full-time nurserys are expensive to run, and that cost has to be passed onto the parents who don't want to pay any more than they have to. So, nurserys of course are going to cut corners and not have 25 spare chefs on their payroll just in case one quits unexpectedly. Parents have to accept that or accept paying higher fees.

The overall vibe is chaotic.

Our nursery is similar. Staff are lovely but you sometimes feel that 2/3rds of the time they are a staff member short, basically.

The only issue I'd have with that is the newsletter with spelling errors. There is no excuse!! That would really annoys me. It makes the staff look uneducated.

As for the other issues, it can't be news that the industry is in a staffing crisis. I work in childcare and my manager is permanently recruiting. I'm in Ireland and we often have to recruit from European countries where very professional and educated staff come for a year but don't speak English or are very accented, absolutely not ideal for the children. I imagine since Brexit it's trickier in the UK.

The point of a fire drill is that you act like it's a fire. That means immediate evacuation no coats, toys or shoes. I dont think it would go down well if some toddlers perish in a fire because others took too long to get their shoes on.

@TheSwarm if you go to a shop and pay £108 for an item and it doesn't work properly, do you just suck it up because it's hard to recruit retail employees? I imagine you're probably going to ask to exchange your item.

I chose the sum of £108 because that's the day rate for a 0 -2 year old in my nearest Busy Bees nursery (the article I referenced). For £108 a day I think it's understandable that parents are asking for a service they can rely on. I accept that not all nurseries charge £108 a day - some less and some more.

Whilst I have no idea how much the OP is paying this kind of scenario isn't unheard of.

Edited post as I accidentally cleared the quote I was referencing.

Oh and no one is asking for 25 chefs on payroll. That's quite the exaggeration, but a contingency plan is good.

Hiring a temp is often not as easy as you seem to think.

Nursery staff are limited and they have to stay in ratio. Also they do not have the food handling training or the allergy training required.

Unfortunately nurseries are also having recruitment issues in general. It is usually a minimum wage job with long hours. Based on this more people are discovering that working in a supermarket is a better option than working with children. Nurseries don't generally have spare staff and if they don't have enough to meet ratios then there only option is to close.

It's unfortunate the chef went on holiday and the did not return. But this is outside of their control. They wouldn't have known this and they can't exactly force them into work and demand they stay there til a replacement is found.

Fire drills are to keep people safe. Assuming it was unexpected then I think you should accept the nursery behaved as they should in getting children out the building as quickly as possible.

The only thing that they could sort easily is their spelling.

Would you pay £200 for the same item just on the off chance that 2 years down the road it might decide it doesn't want to be a fridge any more?

That's the reality of the situation. You want a better service from your nursery, it'll cost more and most parents will not accept that. Nurserys are not, as you originally stated, rolling in money as a rule, margins are extremely tight.

I don't know why you're so adamant that people should accept poor service nor why you think that nursery fees don't increase.
My children can't have attended the only nursery in the UK that had an annual fee rise.
I do recall our nursery putting up the fees with less than the 28 days notice as was stipulated in the contract. The parents complained and were quite rightly refunded.

You're the one who insisted that nurserys are rolling in money and can cover having multiple staff for roles, when the fact of the matter is this isn't the case at all.

And it's not about routine fee increases, is it. If you hire an extra chef just to provide redundancy to a chef walking out without notice, that's another 30-40k the nursery needs to find on top of usual inflationary pressures.

This is not hard to understand.

It's not hard to understand that that's not what I said.
Bank staff on a zero hours contract is very different to having a substitute team on a pay roll.
And as I have previously said, I know that childrens nurseries vary between small, community run day care/charities and big chains, which are bound to have different structures and capabilities.

However if there's zero money to be made in childcare, why are private equity firms investing in nurseries?

Absolutely agree. The pay is dire, the hours are ridiculous and expections of staff unrealistic, the only good part of the job is the children but with ratios so high you’re painfully aware they’re not getting anything close to the attention or care they need. It’s grim, and honestly it’s no surprise that staff are leaving in droves.