Disability discrimination

[user593]

Has anyone pursued a disability discrimination case against a nursery? Gone through the complaints process/ reported the nursery to OFSTED, etc? If so, could you share your experience?

Not against a nursery as such, but agains the LA - with the complete support and encouragement of the nursery manager.

So might be able to help in some areas but obviously it was a bit unusual in that the nursery wanted to have DD, but the LA refused to allow adaptions to be made.

@ARichtGoodDram Our DC needs an unusual dietary modification, not difficult to provide but goes against EYFS guidelines (although those guidelines allow for deviation when there are medical reasons). First, they said we didn’t tell them about it prior to registering (we did), then they said they wouldn’t accommodate it, even with a medical note (which they said no doctor would ever write for me anyway) even though I explained they were asking me to put DC’s health at risk, and when I asked them to put what they’d said in writing and attached the medical note they didn’t respond at all, until I formally withdrew DC at which point they said they would have discussed a health care plan with me if we hadn’t withdrawn DC. DC has a ‘hidden disability’, and everyone else we’ve dealt with (he attended a different nursery before this) have been nothing but lovely, so I was really taken by surprise by this.

I haven’t been through it myself, but a friend of mine did raise a complaint with OFSTED about a nursery and they actually took it pretty seriously. It took a bit of time, but she said keeping everything written down (dates, what was said, emails) really helped her case

In your friend's case did ofsted ever reach out to her / him to obtain the email evidence? I’ve recently reported my nursery on a similar but broader matter and found the process so far very discouraging as they refused to accept my complaint 2 times before accepting in the third instance and then it seems you don’t get any further contact or insight in terms of what are they doing with the information you’ve provided.

Make a formal complaint to the nursery, and if they don't address it make a complaint to Ofsted.

It will depend what the complaint is, but often they're not going to be investigating your particular issue as such but seeing if the nursery is meeting it's duties under the EYFS. That may just be a case of phoning the nursery or writing to them though.
If they didn't accept your complaint it may be that they considered it to be something best addressed through the nursery's own complaints procedure.