AIBU to report a colleague after a child with allergies was given milk?

[Pinkpony123]

AIBU- So I work in a nursery and I had popped inside (all the children were outside eating snack) when I came back out something told me I needed to look in child X's cup to see what was in it. (Child X has a dairy allergy) I look into the cup to see milk, I take the cup away and ask "Why has X got milk, they have a dairy allergy?" When I said this I was unsure who had given it to them (This is relevant). Another staff member who has been in the class for months said she had forgotten X had a dairy allergy and thought it was just Y.I then go inside to double check the X's allergy action plan. When I come back out I just reiterate what is said on the plan and go sit by X to monitor them. A few minutes later go back in to fill a child's water bottle, and one of the managers pass so I let her know incase there is any backlash from the parent (rightly so). The member of staff who gave the milk is taking it super personally and won't talk to me and has also seemingly turned the other staff in my room on me who were previously friendly with me. This member of staff has also received no sanction, and other staff in the are saying because shes new its ok (baring in mind we have other children with anaphylaxis alergies in the class) So am I being unreasonable to think she is totally over reacting as she was the one at fault for giving X the milk in the first place.

Across the room recently I have had to take food off several children given by other members of staff because they have given a child a food they are allergic to or are not allowed.

What protocols does your nursery have to ensure allergy information is followed? Do you have two staff members on mealtimes, one for regular dietary needs and one for students who have specific needs? Do the allergy children have different coloured cups/ plates etc? We have red plates for allergy, yellow plates for intolerance, blue plates for dietary preference (eg: religious, vegetarian) and white plates for everyone else. The children have placemats with name, photo and dietary needs on and they’re coloured to correspond to their plate/ cup etc. We also have serious medical information including allergies clearly visible on the wall.

You are misinformed and frankly an arsehole for posting about something you clearly know nothing about. Dairy allergy is very much an allergy and children have died from it in the UK.

Lactose intolerance is something completely different.

We have nothing like this in place! Management would have been verbally told and that's about it.

Management don't do anything each time they are made aware and then nothing gets done about it.

It was within seconds of the incident happening, the staff member was still handing out the snacks to the other children. I’m not against reporting the error at all, but as team member I’d nudge my colleague to do so before going to the manager otherwise I know that it could lead to work based alienation, distrust between staff, as it escalated to this.
The whistleblowers always get the backlash.

Why don’t they use different colour plates or cards or something. Photos of the kids/names with allergies listed.
This is awful!

Yes they were, they were surprisingly OK about it and said the child is on the milk ladder (which is now being used as an excuse by staff that it's ok and doesn't matter)

How do you know? The child does have an allergy we were told (by parents after the incident) they probably would have had to have drunk the whole cup to have made them ill but its still an allergy.

Is the nursery privately owned, or is there someone higher-up you could report this to? Since management don't seem to care.

We have place mats with pictures and what their dietaries are. An adult is sat with each table at meal times. The information is also displayed on the wall.

You need to find a new job and report the nursery to authorities as it seems like no one is following the procedure.
It is a hard job to do, similarly to a carer, you’ll find 8 out of 10 staff couldn’t care less about the job, just the wage. The few that do care are like diamonds and need to find the right place to work.
This place will make your hair turn grey.
I hope you find another job where they follow the rules. This place sounds toxic.

The manager was there so I felt I might as well have let her know seeing as nobody else seemed to be planning on.

We have all this in place but still happens all too frequently.

A useful suggestion could be to have a space on the wall where food is distributed with print outs of each child with allergies/dietary requirements. It could be easily covered if it's the main room when parents come in for events (as if GDPR outweighs a real risk to life for some children).

ETA: cross posted with the info about the wall.

There's no excuse. A fatality would result in closure and loss of jobs in addition to the actually important thing of a child being harmed through laziness.

Yeah it's awful especially as minor mistakes get pulled up(like missing items of clothing) but serious things like this don't. Trust me I'm working on getting out!

We already have this in place.

This is the kind of vigilance and care I expect as a parent with children in nursery, so thank you!

Ignore your colleagues who are acting like the children.
It takes time to fit the right fit in this type of job. I hope you find something soon, nice places with caring colleagues do exist, well done for taking your role seriously. It is a jungle out there.
Is there any nanny type roles around, you would be an asset to any family.

Sounds as if your nursery have the correct processes in place but just don't use them? They need to follow through with what happens when 'mistakes are made'. If management don't take this seriously then it's no wonder staff don't care. Are you able/prepared to escalate this further? Thank you for taking this seriously.

Sounds like allergy awareness and procedures are really slack in your workplace, OP. That's appalling. Don't management care about that?

Thing is, it would be very hard to get our son having the "right" amount of dairy for his intolerance at nursery.

He's on the ladder, but progress is slow, and if he had diarrhea as a result of having milk at nursery, that would be him off for two days without our having done anything wrong or it being contagious.

So we agree no dairy with family and nursery, and we make the steps towards getting him ready for having full dairy.

The ladder is bloody hard to follow because you can never be sure whether loose poos were cause by the latest bug, or something else he ate etc.

You need to read the info bro, the child can have small amounts duh

Please do report it. As a mother to a child with anaphylaxis this is so worrying.

Your last line alarmed me the most - so this has happened several times?! This place needs to be shut down.

They only care about what the parents think so if the parents care then they care if the parents aren't worried (was only a small amount so they weren't hugely concerned) then they don't care even though next time could be worse. They care more about parents complaining about lost clothing or not posting enough photos each week then the actual wellbeing of the children.