Nursery Staffing issue

[sunshinedaisies00]

Looking for opinions on if this is a concern, the nursery is open all year. Since the easter holidays the staff in the room has been very random, bank staff everyday and some permanent staff.

Things have seemed very chaotic where in the mornings, They've had to ask for no more children to come in due to staffing issues until a certain time. They also had way too many children in and mixed rooms (toddler and preschool) due to not enough staff. (I believe once more staff in, the children would go to their own usual rooms)

The experience of recent isn't the same as how it was, it’s an extremely expensive nursery & feel like there should be more consistent staff around and not so many bank workers and different people every day.

Due the above, the updates and activities being updated to parents isn't happening very much. Im wondering if this means the children also aren't getting the same experience in the room with the activities.

AIBU to speak to staff on this matter? Any advice would be appreciated.

I appreciate it's not an ideal situation for your child, but they're obviously aware of the staffing issues so i'm not sure what you want to discuss with them.

It sounds like they've suddenly lost a member of staff, and are therefore having to cover with bank staff until they are able to find and hire someone for the vacant role. Unfortunately it's getting increasingly difficult to find staff who want to work in early years, as the days are long and pay is low.

I understand why you're unhappy and you could look at other nurseries, but unfortunately many are facing the same problems.

Thank you for replying, I understand there are challenges for nurseries. I feel from speaking to other nurseries that these challenges are taken care of by having more staff in each day to cover potential staffing issues like holidays and sickness. Some seem to be better organised

Everything Whinge said.

The Nursery will be aware they are short staffed.
Where I live / work, every single Nursery I go in (as part of my job, I visit a lot) has not only staff shortages, but have had to employ staff they wouldn't have looked at 7 or 8 years ago - which then creates further issues.

I think it is reasonable to assume that the Nursery itself would desperately love to be able to employ enough staff, and enough good quality staff, but you can't magic them out of thin air. If they can't get enough staff to meet minimum staffing ratios, I'm not sure why you think they would be able to employ enough staff to be 'spare staff'.

The children will be getting the same care but they obviously don't have time to be updating the app with photos etc as they would. There was a change with this a couple of year ago anyway to pull staff away from updating the app to be with the kids.

the nursery will be stressed and aware of the situation but you have no idea what's happened to staff that aren't there.
you bringing it up isn't going to change anything other than add to stress

I think you could politely ask for more information to gauge what's going on and the likely timeframe for improvement.

It could be an unfortunate combination of annual leave and people being off sick – that will sort itself soon enough. It could be they've lost a couple members of staff, but they're interviewing next week – again, likely to resolve itself. Or it could be that it's an ongoing problem and you'd like to look elsewhere, but as others have said, it's really difficult for nursery to find and retain staff just now, so many others may be in the same position.

I don't think a nursery would WANT to run like this. It sounds like they are running with max staff they can afford, or they have just had a really unfortunate - few people leave at the same time, plus some sickness and moving people round is the only way they can get legal ratios for each room. I would give it a few weeks and see if it improves. Like if they really can't get enough staff long term I'd be worried, if it's just that X, left Y who replaced X is more experienced with babies than toddlers who X was with. Z's mum died so she's off, and then a stomach bug has gone through meaning random holes all over as different staff catch it, they are just playing catch up at the moment and once X gets up to speed, Z comes back and the tummy bug goes through and moves off, it will settle!

The Easter holidays are very recent. Give it a couple of weeks at least.

Do they have term time staff who have been off and they’ve struggled to cover them? If so it should be improving again now.

The childcare industry is on its knees due to a huge lack of qualified, experienced staff. The nursery is clearly doing its best with the staff it has available. They can't just pull qualified practitioners out of their backsides.

If you're that concerned, employ a nanny or take your child to a childminder.