"Nurseries 'pose risk to children'" - please, this isn't to be a ranty thread - I just wonder what the answer is

[hunkermunker]

Have you read this article?

There's something wrong with a society that doesn't make it easier for parents (I don't mean both, I mean one or t'other - both would be fab, but even I'm not that impractical!) to be at home with their children for at least the first year of their lives, isn't there?

And yes, I know the Government are bringing in 9m paid mat leave, but in reality, lots of firms will just pay the six weeks 90% of full pay and then £104 a week or whatever it is - and that's not nearly enough for lots of families.

Yes, I also know that people can move house/change jobs/downsize - and some people do all this and it works for them.

But equally, there are people for whom this is utterly impractical.

What's the answer?

how do i know if a nursery is inadequate? the same way i would know if a cm or nanny or gp were providing inadequate care of course.

i agree with the second half of your post up to a point, but only to the extent where "inadequate" nurseries were the only choice - i.e. no cms with vacancies instead.

But Christina, terms like 'institutional care' are very inflammatory and negative - they remind me of dickensian orphanages, long-stay asylums and all the other 'bad' care environments that have, thankfully been abolished. I know it sounds like nit-picking but until we talk about nursery care as an acceptable alternative to parental care, nursery will be considerd the poor relation and not be given the kick up the bum that SOME of them need. therefore, parents will end up using sub-standard care as there is no alternative. I am VERY lucky that my nursery is excellent and has good care commission reviews - what i would do otherwise, i don't know.

We should be lobbying the Care Commission to use its statutory powers in forcing nurseries to improve or close if they are rubbish rather than the softly-softly 'please make changes' approach they use now. I'm up for it, who else is??

I think that the word "inadequate" is misleading in that of course "we all know" what inadequate care for a baby/child is. It's when they're left in pain/discomfort/hungry/thirsty, etc.

But in this context, it's different - it's about adequate attachment. And that's hard to quantify.

well, yes, it is hard to quantify. remember also that this survey talks about very young children - suggests less than 6 - 9 m.

...meant to add, everyone is entitled to 1yr paid mat leave now. although not everyone can afford to take it - as the main earner in our household i couldn't myself.

I'd call under twos very young children - pre-verbal (and yes, I know some are talking sentences at 10mo, but ykwim).

I am loulou!

Everyone entitled to 9m paid mat leave from April, I think. And it's not full pay by a LONG way. £104 a week doesn't cover food and council tax for us!

hunker, you may but the report doesn't or at least the garbled press version of it.

i think there are a number of people on this thread who are simply anti-nursery, full stop - going much further in their criticism than is justified by this report. i've said my piece so will bow out now.

but often there is no choice. let me give you an example.

Until recently, there were three leapfrog daynurseries in Swindon, one of which was ex jigsaw. One of the nurseries last year received an absolutely horrendous ofsted report, I mean horrendous, common sense, health/safety things like not keeping milk for babies in the fridge etc. The ex jigsaw nursery received a decent ofsted report. However, leapfrog ploughed an absolute fortune into the substandard nursery to bring it back up to standard and to get the next ofsted rating back up - ofsted came back three months later and improvements had been made. the nursery was still substandard. Then in September, leapfrog closed 35 nurseries nation wide, and originally they should have closed the substandard one, but because they'd put so much money into it, they couldn't justify having spent the money and then closing it, so they closed the good one.

parents were given 6 weeks notice, and because of a now lack of childcare, many had no choice but to choose the inadequate nursery. The nursery is so bad that it has again been reported to ofsted. it should have been closed last year IMO.

it is not acceptable for nurseries to be offering that kind of substandard care. If parents have to put their children into nurseries, then the law needs to protect those children, and there needs to be tighter regulation of nurseries.

I have to say (sorry hm, got a bit touchy there, but not with how the thread started out, which was very sensibly put) that when I was a new mum I chose a nursery rather than a cm precisely because I didn't want my child to become attached to one single quasi-maternal figure (as in the case of a cm). I wanted to be my dd's mum, and I wanted her to be in a good nursery where she'd be well looked-after with lots of attention etc, but where there would not just be one other 'mother figure'. Now I realise that this was just my insecurity, but it was a real factor which informed my choice at the time. I moved house when my dds were 18 months and 3 years old and the nursery in my new town was awful - definitely inadequate in my view. I ended up with a wonderful cm, and now I realise how well a cm would work as childcare for a younger baby as well. In the unlikely event of me having another, I'd definitely use my current cm without any qualms whatsoever. But I wonder how many other people choose nurseries for similar reasons to my original ones. (Or am I just weird?)

Whoops, got interrupted there while typing that message and the thread moved on massively.

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Exactly my point, wannabe - what we should be doing rather than picking on parents for using nurseries we should be forcing them to be good or close. in some areas, nurseries have us parents over a barrel, 'use us or you can't have chld care and you can't work'. As parents, we should be forcing the care commission to do something about bad nurseries and provide us with enough choice so no one has to use a bad nursery. Its about child care being 'good enough' - just like us parents should strive for 'good enough' rather than 'perfect'

PS Thanks Franca - you've made my day - i'm off home to ds to give him a big hug and find out how he got on at his 'good enough' nursery ...

Pitchounette - 40% of children are insecurely attached not because of going to nursery or child care but because of parents less than adequate parenting IMO. Some children stay at home with poor parenting and some go to nursery with good parenting - you can't judge child care on children's attachments. so much more influences their lives and attachmemts than whether they go to nursery or not.....MUST go now!!!

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Sir Richard Bowlby - any relation of THE Bowlby -Mr attachment himself - do you think?

I must own up.... we came back from holiday a day early and put dd back in her nursery so we could go canoeing (and had a lovely day, thank you very much!).

Seriously though, Bossykate is quite right - the research just shows that, er, bad nurseries are bad. It doesn't have a lot of relevance for those of us who are lucky enough to have access to good ones.

There does seem to be a very bleak view of nurseries on this thread and I know that there are many which really are that bad. However maybe some people don't realise how good some of them are too. Our dd is at the campus nursery in the uni where dh works - it does not exist to make a profit but to provide a service to students and staff of the university. Staff are older than usual and have lots of experience and there has been almost zero staff turnover in the 11 months dd has been there (one staff member went on mat leave). To be honest when I went back to work I was bracing myself for guilt over leaving her but it became clear immediately that she was happier there than at home all the time - even from 5 1/2 months she seemed to thrive on the extra stimulation. She has a full-time place but I don't in the least feel like her attachment to me is harmed - she gets a couple of hours of us in the morning, a couple more in the evening, and all day at weekends. When we take her into nursery in the morning she holds out her arms to the nursery workers to pick her up and looks delighted to see them; she does the same to us when we pick her up in the evening, if she's not being cuddled when we arrive, which she often is. In all the time I have spent there I have hardly ever heard a child crying.

However I don't know what the answer is for improving the bad nurseries. This article in Spiked by Jenny Bristow says some quite sensible things about the negative effects of regulation and my fear is that being more heavy-handed would actually damage the good ones. (One of the things they said to us at our nursery when we came to look round was that they don't have communication books because the end of the day, when you'd be writing them up, is precisely the time when the children are tired and need most cuddles so need staff attention most; also that they think it's a poor lookout if it's not possible for the people who've been looking after your child all day to find five minutes to talk to you about how they've been.)

OK, rant over

becky - yes he's john [THE] bowlby's son