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.

I live VERY locally and the word is that another parent held the door open for him after being buzzed in by a member of staff and he followed them in and went up to the nap room to collect the child.

Goodness. We often picked the Gdcs up from nursery but IIRC dd or SiL had to tell the staff in advance who’d be collecting them - for a while there were 2.

Dh once went on his own to collect Gds, 2, who very happily told everyone on the way out, ‘That’s my Grandpa!’ ❤️

Negligence would potentially become criminal if serious, specific harm was caused. In this case, it wasn't. I've followed every post Jody has on Tiktok the last few weeks and the police did interview the man. She took her daughter to the GP. Ofsted have an investigation open.
There is no evidence right now of a crime for the police to investigate.

Around 3% of people literally cannot differentiate between faces, they are completely incapable of telling the difference between their own mother and a random woman of roughly the same age. And if you think that's unlikely, how many older people do you know who are functionally blind or deaf and either refuse to acknowledge it, or refuse to wear glasses or hearing aids to correct it? I know more older people who refuse to use their prescribed aids than those who regularly use them. If this man didn't know what his granddaughter was wearing it's completely believable that he would accept that the child who was given to him by nursery staff was the correct one.

Also, if the child was returned within 15 minutes, that means it was 7-8 minutes at most until he realised it was the wrong child, as he obviously needed to turn around to bring her back.

I was very disturbed when I saw the original post that many people were encouraging the mother to have the child forensically examined by a medical professional. This would actually involve actions that could be deeply traumatic to the child, and there is absolutely no call for that to even be considered.

Do you truly believe that?

This is the exact same scenario as someone picking up the wrong suitcase at the airport, as far as criminality goes. Someone picks you your suitcase in error, leaves their own, takes it home and realises it and then returns the bag. They are not charged with a crime. They wouldn't be considered thieves, by most normal people. In society, we tend to understand that intent is a key part of criminality.
If someone snatched your suitcase from you in the airport and ran off with it to harm or destroy your belongings, you understand that would be a very different situation.

Please don't respond with 'how can you compare a suitcase to a child?!?!?!' and understand the point being made which is about comparing intent and consequence, not comparing the value of a child to a suitcase.

A grandma wouldn’t have made that mistake.

Just saying.

While I don’t think this is common, this is how I ended up pretty much being raised by my grandparents. I started nursery at 3 months when my mum went back to work (back in the 80s). The first week I was there, she walked right in the open door, through several rooms to the baby nursery, where I was sleeping, picked me up and all my things and walked out and no one noticed. She said she got in the car, had a panic attack and I never went back. I was with my grandparents 8-6 5-6 days a week after that.

That said, I don’t think this sort of this is a regular occurrence anywhere and good childcare providers will have checks and balances in place to prevent exactly this. My two were in nursery from 9 months and I never had any concerns about their safety there.

This

If I'd sent my father to pick one of mine up (they are all adults now and he was never asked to pick up any of them) he might have gone to pick up a blonde girl and come back with a dark haired boy

He simply wouldn't have noticed the difference

If he was handed a child,he would have taken it on trust that the child was the right one

I'm sure he has facial blindness (I'm amazed he didn't lose one of his own children as we grew up)

He would never have walked in,picked a child and walked out though-he would have waited in reception,spoken to a member of staff,rang me for any passwords and then been handed the (hopefully right) child

Someone's fucked up big time

Depends how many grandkids she has. My grandmother (long dead) had about 30 grandkids and I can guarantee she would have 😂

This is what happens when parents of small children have no option but to work full time/long hours to keep food on the table. The desperation of sorting childcare. Taking the risk of someone picking up your child who isn’t switched on enough to be taking care of them.

Honestly can’t imagine leaving my kids in the care of a person who wouldn’t be able to pick them out of a line up, unless I was absolutely desperate

At 2 I'd be highly suspicious of a grandparent trusted enough to collect a child but not recognise them.

This poor family, I wouldn't rest until the nursery was shut down. Shame on those staff and shitty excuse for a grandfather (which is the best case scenario, the worst does not bear thinking about).

I agree with you op. It’s terrible of the nursery, and I bet it was costing the family a fortune to send the child. Having worked in numerous nurseries in different roles, I’m not surprised this happened. Many nurseries are money making places, minimum wage and minimum staff, maximum profit. They should be much better regulated.

I've followed every post Jody has on Tiktok the last few weeks and the police did interview the man. She took her daughter to the GP. Ofsted have an investigation open

@Scunnygal is the nursery still operating as normal?

Oh god so the mother is sharing everything on tictoc not that great on safeguarding herself is she.

Gosh, you do have low standards.

How on earth is sharing her experience online a safeguarding risk? That makes literally no sense. Do you understand what safeguarding is?

Massive failure in safeguarding procedures.

Sharing anything about your kids online is a safeguarding risk. People seem to know her name where she lives etc

I’m just thinking of that poor wee girl crying because she didn’t want to go with the strange man. 🥲

She’s getting divorced because she doesn’t expect bottom of the barrel behaviour from men and that a man with a caring role to a child, father, grandfather, should recognise his own relative?
What point do you think you’re making here??

It doesn’t sound like she’s actually sharing things about her kids online, its one particular story focusing on the failings of the nursery setting she used to attend.

You are too paranoid OP

Being ‘paranoid’ where children concerned isn’t a bad thing. It’s shame more parents aren’t more ‘paranoid’ and then we’d have less abused children.

There would have to be intent, which it doesn't sound like there was. There was ineptitude on the part of the grandfather and negligence on the part of the nursery. I'm not saying that it isn't a shocking thing, but it's also not a police matter. The nursery will be dealt with by whoever inspects them and whoever licenses them.