We had our children in this nursery. Very BAD experience!!! Constantly gets worse.
Keep away!!!
We had a 2.5 year old and a 6 month old sons with the nursery. While being reasonably good at the very beginning (one of our kids was in the nursery since they opened in January 2011), the quality of service has, in our opinion, deteriorated dramatically, especially after the nursery received high Ofsted ratings. We made several oral complaints which had very little effects if any.
One of the key problems was understaffing, which was mostly visible in the mornings, almost every day. Only after several complaints the nursery took an action to keep more practitioners indoors (actually, they had the manager sitting with the children regularly together with other staff, instead of doing her direct job). At their own discretion and without informing the parents, the nursery was combining the children of different age groups so as to optimize the staff utilization, resulting in under 1 year sleepy kids mixed with roaring 1-2 year kids.
In addition to the above, the nursery had considerable turnover of the practitioners. At the end of our stay, we were not even sure who our key person was, because they were not proactively speaking with us, presumably due to us complaining before.
Another point that was brought to the attention of directors was about a number of sharp corners in the main children room (for age 2-3 years). We suggested that they install corner guards, which should have been a trivial exercise. This did not happen and during a subsequent meeting we were told that they have performed ?risk assessment? (not being able to define ?risk? in this context) and since, in their words, ?there have been no accident in a year? they decided not to install the guards! This is a very good indication of the levels of discussions we had with them and their reasoning.
Other complaints we had were about children left in the draughts not dressed properly (and getting sick), which was justified by Ofsted recommendation for the children to be mobile (!) and that the junior apparently not getting enough liquid (according to their own records), which was not justified at all. These are not jokes, this was real.
After few later complaints (and we finally made a written one), directors booked a meeting with us, supposedly to discuss ?actions? they were taking to resolve the issues (as if actions taken to resolve the issues would not have clear, apparent and observable effect and required hinting). The meeting took place after we left the children with the nursery. During the meeting (which had fairly remarkable twists) we were told that the nursery was ?taking complaints seriously, bla, bla, bla?, but since the owners had full confidence in their stuff, our children?s places were terminated with immediate effect due to us being abusive and threatening (we did threaten to sue them and to complain to Ofsted several times should they not resolve the letter). Basically we were asked to take the kids (which we have left in 30 minutes earlier) and get out on the street.
This looked like a planned power play, as ending up with no child care would be quite a shocker for a typical working family. Perhaps they were expecting us to beg them to keep us in. However we were preparing to take our children from that awful place for several weeks already. Fortunately, one of the parents was on leave on the day, so we could handle the situation on our side, keeping the children?s stress to the minimum (they did not even let the junior one sleep, as all this was happening during his sleeping time). And now children are safe and are settling in a truly professional environment, as opposed to this little ?family and friends? business.