Nursery really messed this up. What do I do?

[Totorooooo]

Nursery called and asked me to come in for a chat at pick up time yesterday.
DD’s room leader brought me into a private room and explained the following:

• A misunderstanding occurred on Monday afternoon
• A member of staff mistakenly handed DD (2) over at the main door with two of her classmates, despite nobody being present to collect her.
• In the hustle and bustle of pick up time she just walked out.
• After several minutes, She approached the fence to the garden where another class were playing.
• Their teacher noticed she was unaccompanied and brought her back inside.
• DH picked up kids about 20 minutes later and nothing was said.

Room Leader says they waited 24hours to tell us because they wanted to establish exactly what had happened before alerting us. That all staff are so sorry. That they will report the incident to Ofsted equivalent (we are not in UK), and that I should make whatever complaint I want to make.

I said I wasn’t sure how I felt or what to do. I dropped kids off as normal today.

Today at pick up it was very obvious that only senior staff members were on handover duty. They were counting kids out one by one, and naming them as they handed over. A deputy manager was patrolling the car park.

Now that I have had a day to think about it, I feel angry and sick. But I am uncertain about what, if anything, to do next.

DH was also angry, but says he thinks we can trust the school to take the appropriate steps in terms of disciplinary procedure and safeguarding.

The kids are happy and settled in the school and DD is totally oblivious to what has happened.

What do I do now?

To me this is a "never event". It should never happen and things could've gone awfully wrong.
It looks like they've taken the mistake seriously and changed their policies but it's too big of a mistake to make in my opinion. I'd take child out and make a complaint.

Difficult one OP. I agree this should obviously never have happened but it looks like they've understood the seriousness of it and are putting in extra measures to make sure it never happens again. I think these awful incidents caused by human error can happen at any time in any setting tbh as humans are fallible. I can appreciate that you may have lost trust in the nursery though from this but then if you move settings how easy will it be to build up trust over again in a new setting?

I don't think there's a right or wrong answer and you just have to do what feels best to you.

That absolutely shouldn't have happened, BUT it sounds like they fully understand the seriousness and have taken robust steps to prevent it happening again.

If you've previously always had confidence in the nursery, the DC are happy and you are satisfied that they have taken all possible steps to prevent a recurrence then I would seriously consider staying. I suspect it's the nursery least likely to lose your children now!

We've had two serious (but not as serious as yours) incidents with our nursery and after school club, which are the same company. One was a minor burn in the toddler room, and one was misplaced epipens that had been left at school and not noticed until after DD had eaten a meal. In both cases, the staff were horrified at what had happened and had set out a plan to stop it happening again before I even asked.

A happy and settled DC is an important thing. But at the same time if you can't move past this I wouldn't blame you in the slightest.

They sound like they've dealt with it well and explained it to you. They've then followed up with tighter procedures to prevent a reoccurence.

If it was me, I'd keep my child there.

As PPs have said, these things do happen despite every possible procedure being in place. Humans make mistakes and none of us a perfect. They've been honest with you about the incident and sounds like they are on it.

Hmm, tough one. It is very fortunate that your little one is OK and non the wiser and is obviously a serious mistake. However, the school have acknowledged this and have put new measures in place. Added to this, they have been open and told you, which to me speaks volumes. As neither of you knew, they could easily have covered this up. I think this actually shows a nursery that is worth staying with if you are happy with the education- they clearly do care and do take safeguarding seriously. Yes, a serious mistake was made and could have had dreadful consequences. Are the new measure enough to ensure it doesn't happen again? Perhaps it is worth asking for a meeting to find out the new measures.

Unless there's other issues, I would not remove my child. I think they are taking responsibility, putting in necessary measures and informed you of this incident.

I'd be really upset but if my child was happy, progressing and overall.positive about nursery, I'd not pull them out.

Thank you for some sensible responses.
I agree that moving the kids would not necessarily help with building trust.
Yes, they have had a big scare and they have already made some obvious changes.

Perhaps I should ask for a written copy of their incident report and the subsequent changes to their practice. Something I can hold onto to help me calm down.

The school is lovely and we have not had any issues at all before this, but tonight I am very upset.

@CelesteCunningham The epipen example in particular sounds very scary.
How did you feel after this and what helped you repair the trust? How did staff reassure you?

I can understand you being upset; their response is reassuring though and they clearly understand how serious it is and are making sure they don’t let it happen again. I’d give yourself a bit of time to work out if you trust them

With the burn they reassured me by moving the appliance responsible out of all rooms even though it made their lives immeasurably more difficult.

With the epipens, it was the manager's shaking voice as she told me what had happened. It was clear within seconds she was taking it seriously (I've known her years now). Also DD's allergy is to peanuts and they're a nut free site so the risk was low - if anything I think the manager was more shaken than I was.

I'd speak to head for reassurance measures have been put in place to ensure it doesn't happen again.

It sounds like it was all fenced off though, so the child couldn't have escaped the premises? That doesn't make it ok but I wouldn't remove my child from an otherwise great nursery because of it.

I'd ask for a copy of the incident report so you can satisfy yourself they haven't downplayed it.
They will have a missing child policy. You might want to take a look at that and see if it appears that they followed it - although, in this case, it seems they "found" the child before realising she was missing so they may not have had a chance to activate the policy.
Do they have CCTV over the entrance? If so, can you view that and make sure it accords with what they've said. I'm particularly interested in how long she was out for. How do they know it was a few minutes? It could be that they do know exactly as it's all caught on CCTV or it could be that they're guessing.
Then I think it's just a case of seeing how it goes. Now that they have had an incident like this, a repeat would be unlikely if they've learned the appropriate lessons.

Yes it’s scary to hear that this happened. But I think I would be reassured - they’re not downplaying it, they have been transparent, and they are dealing it.

Maybe ask for a chat with the manager to fully understand how they are going to make sure this doesn’t happen again, to help you?

It sounds like their response is good, I’d be very annoyed I hadn’t been informed straight away though. Id keep my children there but I’d also put in a serious complaint and insist on being kept informed of every step of the investigation. Even if they are handling it well they still allowed something very dangerous to occur and that shouldn’t be let go because they no they’ve screwed up.

@Jk987 No, the garden is separated from the pavement/car park by a fence. The car park has a private access road open to the main road at the bottom. If she had taken it into her head to walk home, she could have ended up alone on the main road.

CCTV footage might upset me more. I do think they waited too long to tell us though. Did they tell me the whole truth or did they take time to figure out which bits of the truth to tell?

Perhaps you could ask them to save the CCTV so that if you wanted to view it at a later stage, you could. I would hope they have done this anyway in case Ofsted want to see it. Otherwise, it will probably auto overwrite quite quickly

I probably wouldn’t move schools. It sounds like they’ve taken it very seriously and have put safeguards in place to stop it happening again. You could move them somewhere else where they haven’t got the safeguards in place and it could happen again.

So a parent collected their two children and didn’t notice they got another child too? Or that a child was wondering around the car park? I can’t see how this could have happened? Do the nursery shut the door straight away? Mine tend to wave at the door for a little while to check I’ve wrestled my two into the car, but this maybe bc I’m pregnant!

I have a 2 year old aswell, can’t imagine how scary that was to find out. I wouldn’t move her if she’s settled and happy. I’m sure they will be extra vigilant going forward

I would withdraw my DC without a second thought. That is absolutely unacceptable and there is no way I would trust them again.

With the best will in the world, things that shouldn’t happen are occasionally going to happen. The nursery that’s worth its weight in gold is the one that is open and honest and acts quickly to change procedures if needed. Which, on the face of it they appear to be.

If they’ve reported themselves to the relevant body, are inviting you to make an official complaint if you want and you can see changes in procedure then I think it would be reasonable to say you would have preferred to know straight away and ask for the investigation report and any changes made. Especially if this is the first major incident you’ve had with them. I don’t know if you’d gain much from moving her to a nursery that’s an unknown quantity other than unsettling her.

That is all easier said than done when it’s your child involved though.

I don’t think they waited too long to tell you. Imagine if they hadn’t investigated and just told you “x happened. We have no explanation how, why, no one to be held accountable yet and no clear way forward”. That would surely make the whole situation so much worse and you’d have been thinking the absolute worst for an extra day until they’d completed their investigation. I think if they were using the time to figure out how to lie to you they could have completely concealed it and you’d never have known. They’ve owned up to their mistake and I do think that counts for something. They are clearly taking this matter very seriously and following the correct procedures. No, it shouldn’t have happened, but humans do make mistakes. Even we parents do.
There is no guarantee they would settle into another school easily if you moved them either. And arguably this school putting extra measures in place to prevent this kind of error happening again makes it less likely to happen at this one than at a different school where they haven’t got as stringent measures in place.
I’d certainly complain and demand to see their incident reports, risk assessments etc. but I wouldn’t move them just yet. Give it a bit of time to let your emotions settle. You don’t have to make any decisions this very second.

In many ways your child may now be safer there than anywhere else as it's given the nursery a scare and a wake-up call. They'll be hyper-vigilant over safeguarding and probably with your child in particular.

So she just walked out the front door? And then (luckily) crossed over to the garden??

'A member of staff mistakenly handed DD (2) over at the main door with two of her classmates, despite nobody being present to collect her.'

What was this person thinking? And what about the other two classmates?

That's so scary! I'm sorry :(

Something similar happened to my DC a few months ago (age probably about 14 or 15 months at the time).

At our daycare, parents come in to the room to collect the child. It was around the time of a new influx of kids/their parents. Anyways, turns out a dad that came in to collect their DC didn't close the room door behind him when he left!! Just left it open 🙄 I guess he probably thought he had closed it, but it didn't "click" shut, so didn't actually close.

The door is behind a corner/bend in the wall, so not visible from the rest of the room.

To cut a long story short, my DC got out to the hallway, another kid pushed the door shut behind DC (therefore locking my DC out of the classroom and in to the hallway). They were only out there alone for a matter of moments/few mins tops before another educator came across DC, and brought DC back to the room.

It happened only a few minutes before I arrived to collect DC. When I walked in I could tell the educator was flustered/upset and she told me immediately. I could see she already had the incident form out and was filling it in.

I didn't really know how to react. In one way, my child was perfectly fine. But on the other hand, I can see how it's very serious as it COULD be more serious. In the end, I didn't follow up with anything as I decided on the whole the centre is very very good, my child is extremely happy there. The staff are lovely. And the educator whose "fault" it was, was extremely upset about the incident , so I felt they were already taking it seriously. They did send out a mass email to parents about making sure they close doors properly, as well as highlighting other rules (like not letting older children know/enter door codes ever) etc.

It's been a few months now and I think my judgement of the place was correct- the centre is overall very very good. And I have no concerns since. I feel my child is safe there despite the one off incident.

DC getting out to the car park/ public space is very very scary though, and obviously way more serious! I don't know how I'd feel about this. Probably wouldn't pull DC from the centre if DC is happy and comfortable there. But I would still be upset. So i really feel for you