No management on site nursery setting

[managethis]

I work in childcare. Although having no manager on site for a few hours is perfectly acceptable as we have other DSL's on site.
But...
Is it really acceptable? By law yes.
From practitioners point of view who do they address if a problem arises?
From a parents perspective, if they have a complaint?
From the practitioner/ room leader/ dsl who has to close down and lock the nursery after getting the door to the parents collecting their children?
Help please!

A senior member of staff that is allowed keys etc should be able to cope with all of the above. In as very serious situation then the manager or deputy should be available via phone to speak to parent or staff member. That's how I ran my setting. It would be ideal to have a member of management on site at all times but if there are only 2 of you 1 manager 1 deputy that can be really hard with the shifts that are needed.

I think it depends on the size of the nursery. Large nurseries that aren’t part of a chain should have management onsite because more kids means more parents likely to need face time with them but even then they won’t be seeing every parent & may not be involved in other processes like closing lock up etc. Most parent complaints should be able to be dealt with by a child’s keyworker (they should serve as a contact point) - it’s only escalations that need to be fed up and there should be a process for it that involves management if needed.

My setting now has 70ish kids (have 3 kids who come in odd days right now). I am the owner and manager and I’m in the office 3 days, and wfh 2 days. On the days I’m in the office I’m part of the rosta and not contactable by parents for any reason until after we close (though Keyworkers can escalate stuff) & on those days our accountant serves as manager but he’s only really there for really urgent stuff. We just got rated Outstanding and one thing that was mentioned as a positive was the way this structure empowered staff and helped to catch issues and potential problems early.

This nursery is 90 places and a well known big chain if that makes any difference

The statutory framework as I'm sure you may be aware says there's must be a named person/deputy in managers absence. So if the manager isn't there, that person should be able to deal with any issues. If they are not capable then to me it would be an issue