childminder left 27 kids alone.

[KassandraOfSparta]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cr9dzljq56ejo

Licenced for 8, had 27 in the house. "At the time of her arrest she had 15 children aged under 12, 10 children under primary school age, and two children under the age of one in her care." Reported by parents who had spotted the woman doing the school run but without the kids she was being paid to look after. Wee ones left locked in the house, strapped in prams.

Very bland statement from the Care Commission promising lessons would be learned.

Police should also be trying to recoup the money this criminal woman has earned from her business. Poor kids.

That's insane. I can't imagine all those children in one house yet alone left to care for themselves. Could of easily resulted in a tragedy. What an idiot, at her age at well. Unbelievable.

What a terrible story - and one I can easily imagine happening all over the place.

Curious there was an unannounced inspection the year before which showed things were all fine. How unannounced are these inspections? She must have had some form of warning.

Weird as surely the parents had some idea that there were way too many kids there as must have seen them when collecting theirs

struggling to find when she was actually arrested. First appearance was July 2025 at the Sheriff Court.

You have to remember that Scotland was locked down far longer than other parts of the UK. We had masks until Easter 2022 and public sector took loads longer to get back to normal. Care Inspectorate would not be doing inspections as routine to nurseries and care homes.

27 though is a whole class of kids. 15 primary school aged and 12 under 5. How did her neighbours not notice, and if they noticed, why did nobody say anything??

Also way back when, I was chair of the local preschool/playgroup which was inspected by Care Commission. There was sort of a jungle telegraph as it was well known that an inspector would inspect all preschools in a certain area at the same time. So you'd hear that they were in the area and their inspection was not 100% unexpected. It was no biggie as we had nothing to hide. If you DID have something to hide, a few hours heads-up might be enough.

Also there are probably ways of hiding the true numbers of kids by meeting parents at the door or whatever. But there is a big difference between 8 kids and 27 kids. 27 kids in one house is a fecking zoo.

I’m surprised none of the kids said anything.

It’s also very worrying that so many parents had complaints about their children not being fed, being thirsty when they came home, becoming upset when they went there, or outright saying they didn’t want to go, and yet still their children went. I am assuming this was because of a lack of childcare spaces in the area.

How did the parents not notice when they dropped them off or picked up?

Surely if you thought your toddler was one of 3 being looked after you'd notice if there were 12 cars parked outside and a queue of parents at the door 🤔

And didn't the school wonder why she was picking up 15 kids??

It’s a very weird set up because she had 15 primary school age children in her home while she did a school run - so where did they come from?

I know schools in an area may have a slightly different finish time to make traffic issues easier, but were they not at school? Did she set herself up as some sort of home-school set up ?

It says she played loud music to hide the true number of children from parents at the door but, having run an after school care with that kind of number it’s fucking loud so the level of music must have been loud. Why did nobody pick up on it?

I echo the other poster who said about the jungle telegraph - when other places locally had their unannounced inspections we knew we’d be getting one at some point very soon as well.
one inspector I chatted with at a conference said they knew that happened and if they had control they’d go to the place they had any concerns about first.

I think that was the totals when she was arrested, 15 school age, 10 under school age and 2 babies.
When the parents went to her house while she was on the school run they found 5 in the garden, 1 under the kitchen table and 9 in an upstairs bedroom so she must have gone on the school run to get the other 12 from school.

I think the article is just badly written and/or I read it wrong. It reads as if she left 20+ children home alone and unsupervised on the day she was arrested, but it was actually 27 children over multiple occasions (presumably just occasions they could prove, like the Christmas party).

27 sets of crappy parents as well as far as I'm concerned. They all dropped their kids off every day without a care in the world.

When the parents went to the house and found 15 children alone they called the police.
When the childminder was back with 12 more children in her care, the police arrested her - so she had care of 27 children at that point instead of the 8 allowed.

The preschool l was Chair of was licensed for 25. (And thinking back there were limits as well because we took children fron 2.5 and we could only have 5(?) of them per day. I think some of the parents would have noticed if they'd turned up and there were over 100 kids in the place.

Even if you know nothing about licensing and nothing about the Care Commission, you know that a childminder looks after small groups of kids in her own home. Small groups to me is 4, 5, 6 kids. not 27.

Just read this absolutely shocking

What an absolute horrible comment. I live in this area and you’ve no idea what these parents have been through. Making such a disgusting comment when you have 10% of the information is vile. Do you really think that if any of the parents knew this was happening they would have allowed it? These parents have fought tooth and nail to get justice for what has happened. I’d be more concerned about your own parenting with that judgemental attitude being passed on to your children!

Why didn't they know it was happening?

There's no need to be concerned about me or my children thanks very much. Rather ironic of you to call someone judgmental, don't you think?

Well I am a parent and you’ve absolutely no idea of the full information of how this happened. How dare you. Hate people like you being a keyboard gangster. Do you know exactly what is happening behind closed doors when your children are at school or nursery? No you don’t you trust the people and system to protect them and trust what your children are telling you or not telling you. Keep your vile comments to yourself and pray nothing ever happens to you or your children!

Come on @HFMMM . People are just questioning - quite rightly - why nobody noticed that this childminder had more than three times the number of kids she should have had.

And there’s no need for you to comment your vitriol on something you know nothing about.

How could none of the parents of these 27 children not suspect something?

Crazy. How did the other parents not know ? Did they have staggered dropping off time ?

did the older ones not say anything about how packed /how many small kids were there

I noticed you didn't answer the question though.

And @HFMMM save your outrage. Nobody is beyond scrutiny and those children were put in danger. I'll ignore your dog about my kids seeing as they don't go to any kind of nursery or childcare so it's irrelevant.

No we just knew and let our kids go anyway. Don’t be so stupid. The details of it don’t need to be shared with anybody but manipulators have that name for a reason they are able to manipulate a situation so they’re not found out.

What parents notice will also be hugely dependent on what they’re allowed to see.

The groups I ran were licensed for 30, but children were dropped off and collected at the main door of the school as we used space inside the school building. Now before and afterschool obviously school staff would have likely noticed the excess, but in the holidays there wasn’t anyone except the school caretaker around. We could easily have had way more children.

lots of childminders have doorstep drop off and collection so that’s not unusual.

The worrying bit for me is how drilled into these kids it was to be quiet and with the older ones to say nothing. I hope the local authority help the parents get the children any therapy needed as that’s likely to give them a distrust of adults for years.