KidsUnlimited in Addenbrookes - any reviews?

[LaCerbiatta]

Ds should be starting nursery in September, but it's not looking good... We've been on the waiting lists for the university nursery and for joints colleges since I found out I was pregnant but have just heard that joints colleges won't have a place and it's not looking good for the university....

Called pat-a-cake and harvey road today and they practically laughed at me! What else is there in the south? (we live on cherry hinton road)) What's kidsunlimited like? I seem to remember someone here saying that it's not very good?

Thanks

Hello - my 2 have both been to KU at Addenbrooke's but the staff one (bunnybrookes) not the one on Long Road. DS1 went when he was around 1yr old and hated it. Screamed when I dropped him off for ages. Never very happy with it at that point. We moved him and eventually he had a lovely childminder for a good year.

Unfortunately for us, but lovely for her she got pregnant so we had to send DS1 and relatively newly arrived DS2 somewhere. So when he was about 6 months old DS2 and DS1 went to bunnybrookes again.

It was fine, to be honest. They both seemed to enjoy it, and the staff seemed more stable ( I think the problem DS1 had initially was that it was always a different teenager)

Since then, DS1 started school, and for one reason and another (but not especially because bunnybrookes was bad) we moved DS2 to Patacake. It came at the time when KUs absolutely DIRE ofsted came out so we felt quite relieved that we had moved them both out then.

Having got DS2 settled at Patacake I suddenly realize what KU was missing. They are fabulous there and it is world's apart from KU. He goes to the Cockcroft place one. I can't fault it. They are brilliant. I wish they did longer hours!!

So whilst KU wasn't awful (even at the time they got the bad ofsted), it wasn't great. I wasn't unhappy with it whilst they were there.

And for what it is worth I know people who have children at KU wolfson rd and say it is good. It's just that Patacake is better!!!

Just realized (as I am meant to be updating my CV at the moment but am faffing on mumsnet!) that I done a little fib in my last post - DS2 was actually nearer a year old when he went to KU. I am not sure I would be very happy sending a littler one there given the last ofsted as it was mainly stuff to do with the smaller ones.

Thanks thegrowlygus, that's really helpful! I feel really silly for not putting ds's name down for patacake, specially as it's so close to us.... But we were so confident about the uni...

My kids go to KU bunnybrookes and they are very settled there, come home happy and grubby (in a good way). New manager has made big difference - staff seem a lot happier now somebody has actually stuck around and made changes - there were ?4 or 5 fairly rapid switches of management prior to her arriving, pretty demotivating. Recent ofsted came back as 'satisfactory overall with some goods' which is vast improvement on the previous one. Would be better if it was 'outstanding' of course but for us, the pros far outweigh the cons.

As growlygus said, Bunnybrookes is only for site staff though, so not sure if it's an option for you?

My daughter also goes to KU Bunnybrooks, started when she was 12 months.

For the first three months she was unhappy and we searched desprately for a childminder instead; however she then moved rooms and is currently very happy there and missed it when we went on holiday last week!

It seemed to be the staff in her first room: I certainly found them rude and disinterested.And very young - not being ageist but there was no-one there who seemed to have any life experience. Now her staff are generally fine and I agree the new manager has made lots of changes.