My daughter attended Monkey Puzzle from May 2022 to September 2024.
We removed her due to an incident which involved her being physically manhandled by two members of staff including the safeguarding lead/manager for the setting.
The two members of staff have since been dismissed and a police investigation is ongoing.
Aside from the incident above, for the first year, my daughter enjoyed going to Monkey Puzzle and she made some really great friends. She had some lovely keyworkers, and she developed well. Once the nursery received an Ofsted outstanding rating, the directors opened a new nursery which took their time and attention. They appointed a manager to look after the Altrincham setting and things went down hill from there. To keep things as balanced as possible I’ll start with the pros:
- Good outdoor space including an indoor/outdoor room with the children going out most days (at least once)
- Some caring and good keyworkers
- Central location
- Spanish classes
The cons:
- Staff attrition is very high with a lot of very good key workers leaving after relatively short stints. Interestingly most keyworkers have made sideways moves to other nurseries in the area.
- Leadership - very defensive when receiving a complaint/concern. This really shouldn’t be the case as parents pay a lot of money to this nursery and should be allowed to raise whatever they want, as long as they are polite in doing so.
- As I understand it, the nursery do not have a cleaner, something i feel is necessary for a childcare setting to protect children (and staff) as much as possible from illnesses and infection
- Toileting. My daughter regularly returned from nursery with soiled clothes and underwear, often with nappy rash (when in nappies). She would frequently come back unclean and was not receiving help to wipe herself, something that in my opinion is required at age 2-3.
- Food - limited variety. An example: my daughter ate cheerios and weetabix for breakfast for the entire time she was there. In hindsight I wish I had asked to see pictures of the food served to assess portions, and overall quality. I also wish I’d asked where the food was sourced. I’m aware other nurseries use local butchers such as Taylor’s or Altrincham market etc.
- Trips into community - rare. Disappointing given the central location and we were told that trips were a big part of the nursery experience when we initially looked.
- Behavioural management; negative, & old school
I would say my daughter has had happy moments at monkey puzzle and she made some terrific little friends. Sadly the standard of care did not meet expectations and the recent incident has been very difficult for us to work through.
I imagine the directors will do what they can to turn things around now and I really hope this is the case as children need calm and positive environments to thrive.
The silver lining is that my children are now in extremely nurturing and caring settings and are happy