Just went to visit a well-known and expensive nursery chain in the City. Although we arranged the visit ages ago, they had forgotten we were coming so effectively we were unexpected visitors. I was very shocked at what I saw, particularly with respect to child: staff ratios. But they assured me it was normal. Can someone please advise if I am over-reacting?
The baby room had 9 babies, and 1.5 members of staff. One member of staff was (silently) shovelling food into a baby's mouth. Another member of staff was sat at the end of the room on the floor, so that she could look either side of a barrier into the toddler room. So she was only "half" in the room, and not interacting with any babies. 3 babies were asleep, another one half asleep on a piece of equipment, and 4 listlessly crawling around with no human interaction. One rather pathetically put her arms up to us visitors for a hug.
When I remarked that I thought the ratio was meant to be 1:3, the member of staff said that that didn't count when the babies were asleep.
We then went into a room for 1-2 year olds, where there were about 8 or 9 all asleep, and 0.5 member of staff (the one who was half in the baby room and half the 1-2 room).
Then we went into another room where there were 18 (I counted!) 3 year olds all asleep and no staff. There was an adjoining room with 5 older kids and a member of staff. She was the only member of staff I saw talking to a child.
Is this right? It was the most depressing thing, but maybe I am not used to these things. And maybe we did visit at a quiet time, and you don't need to watch sleeping little ones. (Even if, rather pathetically, some hadn't quite managed to sleep on their mats and were on the floor ). It didn't help that the nursery was in a basement with no natural light in many of the rooms. It has no outdoor area, and we weren't asked to remove our shoes where babies were crawling. And the bottles of formula were all mixed up and left on the side- they didn't seem to know whose were whose when I asked. And the nappy changing area was dirty and smelly. And there was a half eaten Snickers on the side in the kitchen.... I could go on. Is this normal? Please reassure me, it has put me right off all nursery provision.