AIBU to think that a stranger collecting a baby from a nursery is a massive safeguarding issue?

[Peterrabbity]

I saw on @jodyriley_ ‘s Instagram account last night that her 1 year old daughter was incorrectly collected by the grandfather of another child recently. The man seems to have had the child in his care for over 15 minutes before returning to the nursery.

From what I can gather, the nursery have been incredibly shady in what they’ve told the Mum and as more information has been slowly released, it seems that despite the nursery initially saying the child was asleep when collected, CCTV has proved that she was awake and alert. The nursery have also refused to pass on the names or contact details of the person who picked up the child.

I cannot believe how awfully the nursery have handled this. If I were the parent of a child in that nursery, there’s no way I’d be staying there considering how lax their safeguarding seems to be.

He DID take the child from a group of children. He wasn’t handed the child.

There is no crime "criminal negligence"...negligence may contribute toward the conduct of a crime...but what would that specific crime be in this case??
There may be H&S failures, safeguarding failures ...but highly unlikely anything amounting to a crime

Because it isn't doh !

he had no intention of taking the wrong chid, and the grandfather had no ill intentions did not harm the child and brought her straight back

to meet the threshold for child abduction there needs to be intentional actions , deception, bad intentions lies , fraud deprivation of custody harm etc travelling across country putting the childs basic needs at risk etc etc

That has no relevance because the organisation who permitted him to do that are responsible

The nursery absolutely should make more effort to ensure children are collected by the right person but to me I don’t think it sounds like anything nefarious. Some men are rubbish at distinguishing vaguely similar children from each other. I can well imagine my dad being asked to pick up a grandchild and returning home with the wrong one. I would almost put money on the 15 minutes it took to return her being because the grandad took the child to his house where the grandma immediately realised it wasn’t their grandchild and frantically sent him to return the child and bring back the correct one!

I agree @willitevergetwarmpeople are making massive jumps here as is always the case on MN. This man was permitted to collect a different child so if his intentions were grim that's putting the other child at risk every day. Are people really suggesting that all parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, older siblings who collect their family are to be assumed to be paedophiles? What about all the people who don't send children to nursery, are they assumed to be too? How far do we take this assumption, are expectant Dads red flags too? The wrong child was handed to this man by all accounts, he didn't seek to take a different child.

Just because you want something to be a crime doesn’t make it one. Child abduction needs an intent. He needs to have used force or fraud to take the child. He took the wrong one and returned it when he realised. Yes that shows incompetence on his part and the nursery needs investigating by local authority but it doesn’t make it a crime. You need criminal intent and this appears to be a genuine mistake.

Then that is another failure of the nursery's procedures. I have 4 DGC and at every nursery the staff bring the child (even to parents) at pick up.

So many people here making excuses for a man being so useless.

Definitely not assumed. But I don’t think it’s wrong to just ask a few questions of the man who took the child rather than just presuming, without question, that absolutely everything was fine!

Most men I know would be absolutely mortified and would WANT to speak to the mother of the child to reassure her and also to apologise. I know my DH would be mortified and would completely understand why people may leap to terrible conclusions. He would absolutely want to speak to the mother of the child and tell her how the mistake happened.

And believe it or not, actual pedophiles do have children that are family members too!

I'm sure the relevant authorities have spoken to the man and advised him to not speak to the family.

The police were obviously reassured after interviewing him.
BThere's no knowing how the family would react on speaking to him.
Would they film him and plaster him all over SM too?

I realise how impossible it must seem to parents, but I couldn't easily tell two vaguely similar toddlers apart - especially if they weren't next to each other for comparison, which they wouldn't have been,

The nursery staff, obviously, should be able to identify each child correctly.

Exactly, this is a disgraceful action on the nursery's part, but hardly that unlikely on the Grandfathers part.
I'd be using my energy on getting the nursery and staff forced to improve rather than casting aspersions on some random man who was a victim of their uselessness.

The first time I collected my child from nursery I had a big fear of not recognizing my child (I hadn’t really seen him alongside other babies before). Obviously when it came to it, I knew my child and it was a fear built on nothing but going in to it I was like I know my child but does he actually just look the same as other babies or does he look distinct.

This actually happened to my cousin's child . Grandfather picked up the wrong child from school. Little blond girl in school uniform. He said Granny said to pick you up today . Child went with him in the car . Got home , grandmother was horrified. Straight back to school where chaos was erupting . My cousin's husband nearly attacked him . Years later he still resented the man now long dead .

Just mistaken old man nothing else sinister .

My Aunt once went to pick up DS from nursery. She went to the door of his room and said she was Joseph's Auntie and the person in charge said here's Joseph, but it was a different little blonde Joseph! They'd switched rooms since my Aunt had last been in with me, and there were 2 Josephs, one in each room. In this case both sides immediately knew it was the wrong child, so just an amusing anecdote, but can see how this happens.

FWIW I'm terrible at recognising people and often wonder if I have the face blindness mentioned above. My Dad was similar and I could just about imagine him confusing 2 similar looking young children. But there clearly should be better procedures in place, particularly for very young children who can't articulate.

From what I’ve heard he never spoke to the staff. He managed to get into the nursery see a child he thought was his grandchild and walked out with her. If it was that easy for an adult to get in and out with a child without staff noticing that’s worrying. A child could also have got out unnoticed.

He's going to be popular at Christmas 🤣🤣🤣

The thing is for me. My mother and my step dad would recognise my child awake or asleep infact anyone in my family would. It’s so bizarre that this happened it’s strange to me that he was allowed to just stroll through. I work in early years this just doesn’t happen and the other thing is we have to wake sleeping children before they enter and before the exit so they are seen well and obviously conscious.

I thought this sounded familiar. The BBC article is dated the 11th of June, so it was reported over 6 weeks ago. Is there a reason why you are bringing this up now? How much of what is being discussed on this thread is fact?

As an aside, the report in itself is shocking, but things are rarely as straightforward as they seem.

I noticed the date too, but I hadn’t heard anything about it at the time. Was the story just not picked up by people reading for some reason?

WHO are the (currently) 6% of voters who think the OP is being unreasonable?

This is a massive and shocking safeguarding failure.

This happened in Australia too, last year.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g5v4z13l6o

I don’t see how that would help tbh. My child being returned unharmed by the grandfather of another child - I would not be reassured by speaking to the grandfather, because I wouldn’t have an issue with him (I would have an issue with him if he was my dad and he picked up the wrong child!).
But if I’m the parent of the incorrectly picked up child, it’s the nursery that have seriously fucked up in terms of my child.