Nursery keyworker...

[MarathonMama]

My DD (2.2) goes to nursery two days per week. She always been very happy there and has had some wonderful key workers. Today when I dropped her off I was told that her keyworker is changing. The new keyworker is a girl I don't really know who is moving from a different room in the nursery. I have three good friends with children in her old room all of whom think she's awful.

She's not nasty to the children but just not at all engaging and she doesn't seem to be "all there" (their words, not mine). I'm not happy with the change but don't know what to do given that I don't know her. I really trust my friends' judgement but don't want to upset anyone at the nursery. What should I do?

Key workers do change around from time to time. Why don't you give this girl a chance. She might relate better to your DD's age group then she does at the moment. Also how do your friends know she doesn't engage with the children at all. They don't spend the whole day there do they? The girl will be a qualified Nursery Nurse.

My DD's favorite ever key worker was fabulous with the children and not great awful with the parents. Is this possible?

What can you do about it though?

Assigning keyworkers will be a staffing/admin thing (so each staff member has the number of key children they can cope with doing paperwork for, so that their key children are there at the same time as the staff member's shifts etc). The keyworker is unlikely to be spending much more time with your child then anyone else in the room.

One of the downsides of using a nursery is that you don't get to choose who looks after your child.

How many workers are in the room? Does it matter who her key worker is - in ds's nursery they're just the one who does that child's paperwork and I've often only found out who his new kw is just before parents' evening/Ofsted inspection?

Also some kids and parents get on better with different workers - I was saddened a while back when ds's favourite worker was moved from toddler to baby room and he wanted to go with her, but a couple other children didn't click with her, and I know one mother couldn't stand her! I liked her a lot.

If the activities in the room are going to be the same, it might not make any difference to your dd.