Nursery constantly sending home child- going to lose my job

[Ayeayee]

My child is 2 and to be honest I feel like the nursery centre does not like my child. As a result, it seems like they are constantly looking for reasons to send my child home, they are sent home every other week with illness, sometimes several times in that week. They will claim that they have a fever and are inconsolable but upon collection no fever and perfectly fine but they withhold a nap in these instances so child is tired so more cranky. Child is fine at home, no symptoms at home and then within a few hours of drop off, is suddenly symptomatic and needs collection and on collection is fine.

(to be clear no meds are administered at home when I say child is fine, so it’s not a case of oh well they’ve had calpol so they are ok at home but has worn off later)

dh and I have used all our emergency leave now and it’s not even March. Child has been sent home 5 times, twice this week! Same story. We can’t survive on one income.

there is no other Centre around, no childminder, nothing, no family or Friends who can take them either. At this rate I’m worried I’m going to lose my job.

I don’t know what to do. I’ve lost some privileges now at work due to this and have had a few raised eyebrows at the sheer volume of calls, they call me 6+ times to collect asap. It’s not always possible to leave there and then unless an actual emergency.

(reasons I don’t think they like my child, an insistence that they are delayed talking but they actually talk very well, so It’s leading me to think they aren’t engaged with, one accusation that my child (as a 1 year old) was actively victimising other children and wasn’t a very nice child, I’ve seen them shouted at, and I’ve had some serious instances of them being left in a soiled nappy for an excessive period of time, and consistent nappy rash that would clear up at home and when in the centre flare back up (to the point of bleeding) due to lack of changes.)

I don't think it's sexism - OP is the one saying almost her entire wage is swallowed up by childcare, which implies her DH earns more and therefore his salary is needed for the mortgage etc.

Report them to ofsted! Sounds like a horrible place and should be inspected asap.

I know that Child Nurseries and child minders are very Expensive.
Why dont you look into the availability of Nursery provision at local Independent School or State School .
I have history with both and its very good and INDEPENDENT is not as pricey as you might think.

Or if you can't find work in evenings/weekends could he?

It's sounds like a crap situation. I'm slightly rural and only have 1 viable nursery and that's in my neighbouring town. Quite a few of the kids at the nursery are from towns neighbouring the nursery too. There was a second option but we didn't feel it was safe and 6 months later they closed not long after the fire service reported them to Ofsted

I find it concerning that to ensure that a babies nappy is changed satisfactorily that a senior member of staff witnesses it. It shows a lack of trust in their staff to follow protocol. I know you raised it as an issue but surely a refresher training on procedure should be enough. If the staff member doesn't trust them to clean a bottom what else do they no trust them to do?

From a practical point of view I would not be answering every call. If they do call give it half an hour before calling back. If they call late morning ask to collect at lunch. My daughter came home quite a lot from her first nursery. Nothing close to this scale one of the times I couldn't collect for an hour and after that I always asked how quickly she needed to be picked up and found I could nearly always push them back an hour or ask them to try to put her down for an nap and call me later. If I'm going to be unavailable, I'm a lab user so can't answer my phone if I'm on a lab day. I tell them to phone my partner instead. His building is a phone signal black hole so often they would have to leave a message and he can phone them back.

I think in this era of technology we forgot that we don't have to answer every call and every message immediately and I think in the interim whilst exploring all the other long term options the nursery needs to learn you can't jump on 10 messages or phonecalls a day. That's an insane amount of contact.

This is why I’m so glad for my son’s childminder, he’s been going for 18 months and been sent home once as he’d been sick. He’s had coughs, colds, rashes, all sorts but he’s quite good at just being absolutely fine even with something that would knock me out 😂 It seems nurseries just want to offload as many kids as they can despite knowing how much people pay them!!

But we don’t know the husband’s wage relative wage. We don’t know what her earning potential is like versus his. We won’t know if either them could cope with being a SAHP or juggling job searching and nursery searching at the same time or how easy it would be for either one of them to return to similar roles.

I do think it is sexism. She is being asked to should the long term cost to her financially security in a way he is not. Not a single person has suggested her husband retrain as a child minder.

In an ideal world there would be a space at another care setting but there isn’t. So why is it just her that’s being asked to sacrifice?

Because she's the one who's posting and saying her job is at risk?

I know what you're saying but most people direct their answers/suggestions at the person who's posting.

We do know @Ayeayee is newer in her job - I’d have thought her dh ought to have the benefit of the doubt and more established to get concessions. Hope he’s had a good talk with his employer.

you could look at both varying your work hours so that less time is spent in this nursery?

Sexism indirectly is still sexism.

Can you find childcare near work instead of home or vice versa?

Sounds all very extreme and you seem to put up lots of blockers which I’m struggling to believe tbh. Literally no childcare ?

Get yourself onto a childminders waiting list.
Have you tried childcare.co.uk ? Kids move around settings all the time as peoples circumstances change. If the demand is so high as you say I’d be getting onto waiting lists now and not stopping pestering until you get somewhere.… year on year kids drop out. So it’s not impossible to find childcare.

put in an official complaint to the nursery and ask them their complaints procedure. Consider taking it to the Regulator if it doesn’t improve.

and I certainly wouldn’t be held to a 2 months notice period if you are moving due to neglect.

Why don't you look into training as a childminder and make that your new job? From ehat hou say there seems to be a lack of childcare in your area so I imagine you'd be very successful

Not all nurseries my DC current day nursery are fab she’s not been sent home at all in the 6 months she’s been there. OP’s nursery is not normal the amount they are phoning & sending home is ridiculous.

OP has already said she has a disability that means she cant do this.

In all seriousness has it occurred to you that there is something going on with his behaviour? Nursery workers don’t just hate kids but they might well find some behaviours challenging. There are lots of situations that can cause variable behaviour and make children appear unwell.

What behaviours make children manifest a temperature?

their behaviour is fine, they are very energetic and a bit boisterous but it’s all very typical and they are a happy go lucky child. They’ve been seen by a paediatrician (allergies) and the paeds have no concerns, so anything dc demonstrates is in the range of normal and in the field of childcare, pretty sure you still should give the same base level care to all children regardless of whether you find them frustrating

Well I can’t help you there because other posters have said their own family have faced 8 month wait lists, but do you really think that I’d choose this predicament rather than just swap my child to another provider, if I could- I would.

Ok… how long have you been on a waiting list yourself since this issue has been going on a while?

Nope - dismissal for taking emergency dependent's leave is an automatic unfair dismissal, and you don't need any qualifying service to bring a claim: https://www.hilldickinson.com/was-employee-automatically-unfairly-dismissed-taking-dependant-care-leave

A paediatrician who manages allergies wouldn’t be screening for behavioural concerns.

Sorry but for now you have to make it work without you working. Sending your child to a place that you are well aware neglects him, makes you guilty of neglect as a parent.

A general paed who is the head of the local paediatric ward would though, and his speciality is allergies.

if the nursery had legit concerns also then surely they’d highlight this or make a referral, but nothing

3 months!

that runs contrary to what I’ve been told by acas on this, so that’s interesting

Right ok.

the neglect was the nappies which was highlighted, child moved rooms and now has supervised nappy changes, so I can be sure no neglect is occurring. The first incident of dc being left in a soiled nappy I put down to perhaps an oversight but when it continued another few times, I reported it, and fixed a complaint and then management and oversight was put in place as I don’t have anything else in place, but seriously though would it not be neglect to basically not be able to feed my kids which is what would happen if I quit work?