Is this clause normal in nursery prospectus?

[lobsters]

I'm looking at nurseries for DD and found this clause in one we are looking at, which seems odd and I'm not keen on it.

Continuous lateness after 5.45 pm will result in us taking up our legal obligation to call in Social Services to take over the responsibility of your child(ren).

Clearly I don't plan to be continually late, and am planning to pick up long before 5.45, but it seems quite a threatening thing to put in a prospectus. The nursery is highly recommended by friends who use it.

nothing like that in our policy. it's just been re-issued as the nursery has changed hand. it just says that for every minute or so late we will be charge a ridiculous amount of money.

It's a fairly standard thing to have in a contract/policies, I think (I don't recall whether it's in ours or not, but it's come up here before). Actually putting it in a prospectus seems strange, but maybe they've had a particular problem with parents who can't realistically get there for 5.45 signing up their DCs in the past so they want to make it very clear up front that the collection time is not optional (except in extreme circumstances) to avoid unpleasantness in the future.

well, technically it is child abandonment. I suppose,.
i doubt social services would do anything. it's just to scare you into collecting them on time

This is standard and you will find that schools also have the same policy

It's fairly standard I think. They've probably had issues in the past. From experience, it is defintely something they do at school ; Social Services do come and get them if it's an unreasonable amount of time and the parents are non-contactable

Yes, it's typical. If you were late and couldn't be contacted - they wouldn't know what had happened to you and would have to leave the dcs with someone.

you would be surprised at how many parents are late picking up their children
when you have been at work all day, it is bloody annoying to have to stay late.
We can't just go home and some parents take the P
We do have lives of our own, you know

Yes its typical. Perhaps not always in the prospectus, but usually in the contract.

This is a tad outrageous. In most nurseries parents will be expected to pay a further £10 for lateness resulting up to 1 hr. You have to give notice If any longer. Normally if you are going to be longer , you will be asked if a nursery nurse could take your child home and pick then you pick up the child from the house. £6.00 an hr depending on areas until you pick your child up. Which is paid to the nursery nurse.

THe reason being to as why they get social services involved is because they do not have insurance past 5.45pm to have your child on the property. It is therefore 'safer' for your child to be taken to a children's centre nearby or another constituancy.

Chellesgirl, as a nursery nurse i do not expect to have to stay past my clocking off time, and certainly not up to an hour. And I definitely do not want to take anybody else's child home for them. Bloody cheek, if you ask me

Well as Nursery Nurse I have stayed passed my clocking off time many of times to ensure that children are cared for. I have had to take children home and so have many other nursery nurses have had to too. What do you do with your children if the parents dont come within the hour?

Putting it in the prospectus is odd. having a policy about it is normal.

Chellesgirl you shouldn't be taking them home. If the parents don't tun up thats when you contact ss etc.

I've just been reviewing our policy on this and though it seemed a bit harsh it was to legally cover our own backs.

Chellesgirl, we have a late person who stays 15 mins past the time the nursery closes with the manager. i go home when my shift finishes. the manager lives on site, if children are left, she can sort it. that is what she gets paid for. I have my own family to see to, they are more important.

I think its quite common. I know a nursery I worked at where children would reguarly not be collected, and would have to be taken to local Social Services or the local Police Station. Sometimes the parents would collect them from there or the child would be put in emergency foster care.

Our nursery just used to say we will charge an extra £10 for each 15 minutes lateness.

Calling in social services for lateness seems draconian.

Our local soft play has a notice up to that effect. When I was a childminder we told on courses that we were supposed to ring social services if parents were more than 2 hours late and hadn't contacted us.

In our childminding training we were told that if a child is not collected and we do not know why, then we should treat them as abandoned children and notify the authorities. So far I have got by with stern looks at their parents.

Us childminders have this kind of scenario in our child protection policies - it's pretty standard and they teach it on the child protection courses.

If one of my parents was late by more than an hour and I couldn't contact them or any other emergency numbers and they had not contacted me I would have to contact the local social services desk whose number I have on one of our booklets given to us.

Hopefully I would never have to do this!

Chellesgirl - I would never take home a child to my own home if I worked in a nursery. That's down the the manager to sort out surely! What if anything happened on route or at your place? would you be insured? I doubt it.

we were actually on the point of calling social services a couple of weeks ago
a child was due to go home at teatime and was still here at 4pm. The child's session finished at 3.30pm. We phoned all the contact numbers with no luck, leaving messages was all we could do. At 4.45pm we decided we woul call SS at 5pm.
the deputy manager has dialled the number when the parent arrives ina taxi, rushes in and apologises for falling asleep on the sofa
So what should we have done if the child had still been with us when the nursery closed?
Phone Social Services, which is the only thing we could do.

This would only apply if the parents had not contacted us and we coukd not contact them

It is with the parents consent that we only take them home. And it then becomes 'babysitting'. If obviously we couldnt track the parents down and they were over an hour late we'd ring the police. But I worked in a private nursery in a small village. So everyone knew each other.

Oh thats different, then it becomes a private arrangement. These policys tend to be if you can't contact anyone

Yes it is but in the policy it said

'Continuous lateness after 5.45 pm will result in us taking up our legal obligation to call in Social Services to take over the responsibility of your child(ren).'

Its not acceptable for a parent to be more than 1/2 hour late in the first place but this policy dos not say anything about how long they will stay with the child for on the odd occassion. And surely the best way of dealing with it is to ask the mum to arrange a childminder/babysitter for out of hrs so that she can reasure herself someone is caring for her child if she is going to be late. not just to jumo in there and say were gonna hand it over to social services if your more than 5 mins late twice a week. Unnacceptable I think.

reading it again it does seem a bit odd.

I can understand fining if late. I can understand saying if you are consistently late then you will lose your place or something like that. I can understand saying we will call ss if you are more than say an hour late and we cannot contact anyone but that one does seem a little odd.
I still find it strange its int he prospectus anyway, maybe they've been burned before

Maybe