To be seriously concerned about sending DS to nursery given news today?

[SharpPinkDuck]

I have a 14 month old DS and had been planning for him to start nursery 3 days per week in London in January as I have a new part time job which I’d been really looking forward to.

However having read the horrific, disgusting news today about the nursery worker in London who SA’d the babies and children I feel incredibly anxious and unsure that I should be sending him. I don’t feel at all comfortable with the idea of any male coming into contact with him in a nursery setting, I don’t care if that’s an outdated attitude, I am not willing to risk it and clearly there is a risk. My nursery had no men while I looked around and we liked the setting and the staff.

Does anyone have any advice? I cannot believe the world is this way, that I can’t send my child to nursery costing a fortune for fear of him being sexually assaulted or worse.

Could you speak with the nursery management, explain your concerns, and ask to see their changing policy? If you dont feel it offers enough protection, you can 100% request that your child is only given 2:1 changes by female staff. Personal care is generally the only time in a setting where staff and children are 1:1, and even so, the door should either be ajar or unlocked, with other staff in earshot. Several ASN children require a 2:1 change for their own and staff safety, so the setting should have a ratio provision to allow for this.

To echo PP, the bad apples are so few that it is highly unlikely that nursery is going to be a negative experience for your DC, but you should absolutely do whatever you feel necessary to protect your family.

A series caveat to comments about risk perception: whilst cases we know about are very rare, abuse (sexual or otherwise) of very small children can't be all that difficult to do secretly. A baby or toddler might not be able to report what is happening to them and will not remember it when they grow older. This is very different from abuse in schools, abuse of older children by family members etc. There's a possibility that this sort of thing - in childminder settings as well as nurseries - happens far more frequently than any of us realise.

There are plenty of institutions which have been revealed as hotbeds of abuse in recent years/decades which for a very long time were regarded as entirely safe. Plenty of cases of sexual abuse being ignored or covered up. We can't say for sure that nurseries aren't in the same category.

And the vast majority of them men. That's just the reality of it.

Oops, I didn't mean to post twice, sorry!

@NotrialNodeal Was this recently? I'd be very surprised if any family could manage now with only one mimium wage salary coming in and absolutely no benefits.

How rare though? this is the 3rd man caught this year abusing children in nurseries

I don't get why people think childminders would be safer. There's much less oversight at a childminder. I went to view one and she was suggesting having my young baby, two other babies, and her own 3 children and dog. With just one adult! That is crazy and worse than a nursery

My children aren't in nursery.

But for all the mothers who are putting their children in nursery tomorrow you are doing nothing wrong. Just because another poster could live in a fantastic time when a minimum wage job could provide for a whole family, something which is totally unrealistic in 2025 doesn't mean that you should feel guilty for going to work.

My eldest is 13. When the children were small I would work part time hours in the evenings once my husband was home. Nowadays I work full time hours. We have always worked around each other's shifts. We have no family here and this works for us and means we never have had to use childcare. I was always certain before I ever became pregnant that childcare would never be an option for me.

I personally always thought nurseries were safer than child minders as there are always multiple staff around and when mine were little in theory when nappies were changed it was in a kind of room off the main room but not behind a shut door. Having said that a few months after my eldest started nursery a letter went to parents stating that a previous employee (male) had been found with indecent images of children on his computer. He didn’t work there when my child started and tbh it would have put me off the nursery. I really do think it’s odd when men want to look after babies and toddler all day for minimum
wage. That may not be a popular view but I wouldn’t let me very young children go to a setting with a male nursery nurse.

Very rare - there are over 20,000 nurseries in the UK.

What are you going to do when it comes to school if there’s a male teacher or TA? What about a doctor, dentist, nurse etc? What about male relatives? What about if your child joins Beavers, a drama club or whatever.

It baffles me the perception of these things people have, if you considered the number of nursery age children and the percentage this happens to it’s vanishingly small. That’s precisely why it’s news.

I imagine with most abused babies and small children the abuse never comes to light.

Hi OP. I actually considered all of this when choosing childcare. I didn't go with a childminder for the reasons you outline. She might be fine, but husband? Son? Son's friends? Husband's friends? Her elderly dad comes round?

I chose a nursery because I thought 'lots of eyes on them'. One of my children had a male nursery worker, but not at the nappy stage, and I was very comfortable with him. Today, I am thinking back.... I truly hope nothing happened. I wouldn't send my child to a nursery with a male worker after this news.

She wouldn't be mobile enough to run a business anymore if I'd walked in on that.

I honestly don’t know how that chap managed to do that; I work in a nursery, and ratios mean we are never on our own with children.

I think it must be extremely rare, but obviously that doesn’t help the children who are abused 😔.

Our children attended a nursery where a worker was previously convicted of abuse and imprisoned. My rationale for enrolling them in the nursery was that I didn’t think it would ever happen again after all of the investigations and protocols put in place.

They thrived at that nursery. I never regretted my decision.

While we all worry about our children, and I suspect we do so until we die even if they're 60 by that stage, I don't really understand this angst. You do your risk assessment - you vvisit the nursery, you consider their policies and procedures, particularly around safe guarding and, if you're comfortable, you send your child.

Just like you do with making decisions on who to leave your child with in any other setting - Granny, aunts/uncles, babysitters etc.

There are risks out there. We can't avoid them all. All we can do is figure out the best way to mitigate those risks and reduce them. The reality is that abuse in nurseries is rare. It DOES happen But really, the far bigger risk in a nursery and something that's probalby far more common re issues like children not being changed frequently enough, or staff not paying sufficient attention to if the child has eaten/drunk enough etc.

It’s horrific.
I don’t blame you for feeling so conflicted.
I visited 4 nurseries and then I chose the best one for my DS.

Today’s news is absolutely horrendous but we have to remember it is an anomaly, not the norm. I send my DC to another north London nursery in the same chain and I have full faith in the leadership team there. They and their staff are utterly dedicated to the wellbeing and education of young children.

Personally I’m thrilled my DS’ nursery has several male members of staff. Men are desperately under represented in childcare and primary schools and it is a real negative for young boys growing up.
our nursery has strong safeguards in place, recognised by a positive ofsted rating. I trust the team, men and women, as far as you can trust any other person and in particular I trust the measures they have in place to keep my son safe.
if you aren’t sure, ask them given the recent news how would you safeguard against something like that happening. They should be open, up front and confident in their answers.

In my son’s nursery there are always more than 1 adult in the room (usually 3) and nappy changes are done in a corner in this room. I hope that this makes things safer, and that’s something you can look out for when viewing the nursery. (I wouldn’t use a childminder for the reason of her/and her husband being on her own with children in her home.)

I run an after school club and the negativity about my male staff member was awful. I get it, I’m not judging for that but I felt so bad for him as he had so many complaints about doing normal stuff, just because he was male and he ended up leaving. But still, it is generally men who do this kind of thing so I get why some are extra cautious

I completely get that. I was just so shocked that when she returned I just grabbed my daughter and drove away.
With hindsight I wish I had taken photos as evidence as she told ofsted i was lying, but in the moment I just wanted to get her home and safe. She completely gaslit us, when we didn't pay the fees for the following weeks she sent us a bill with 'late fees', I explained why we wouldn't be paying and she pretended it didn't even happen.

You should have called police on your arrival
( I think I would have hospitalised the bitch)