A handful of you who follow me on Facebook may already know that I've been having some issues with my childcare provider, a local 'Day Nursery'.
11 days ago now my wife and I got a letter from the local Childrens Services department in Taunton. The first paragraph was terrifying as it said a complaint had been made naming our daughter. So for about 2 horrible seconds I thought I had been accused of something (or my wife), then it went on to say that it was in fact the owner of my daughters nursery that was accused anonymously of grabbing, dragging, shaking and yelling at her. It also said one other child had been named but that was anonymous to us.
So furious and confused I spoke to various departments, mainly Ofsted who are in charge of investigations.
It turns out that they were already investigating other issues by the time I got the letter. But they couldn't tell me what until the report is finalised.
I spoke to the owner of the nursery who denied hurting any children and said it was a girl who'd left the nursery who was maliciously trying to ruin her. Plausible, possibe, but not provable at this point. So we decided to pull her out of nursery until further news was available.
It feels morally uncomfortable to take one persons word for it, but as the potential risk was high we felt we needed to be cautious.
Since then Ofsted have not updated me much, they've confirmed that things are ongoing and there's now more than one complainer.
I'm fairly confident of who has made the complaint as a girl who worked at the nursery left to do teacher training and a couple of weeks later these complaints came in. I suspect she had a realisation of how many problems there were at her previous employer and so called Ofsted.
And last night the first public complaint was published by Ofsted in which the owner of the nursery has admitted falsifying the register to make it appear to Ofsted that they had the ocrroect ratio of adults to children. In fact they were breaking their license regulations and opened with too few adults.
So armed with that additional piece of evidence I feel alot happier not trusting the owner anymore.
Ofsted still want to speak to us in person, so I feel that this hasn't finished yet. There is more they want to tell us, which is scary, but the police aren't involved (or at least they weren't a week ago) so hopefully it's nothing that is going to traumatise anyone for too long.
I always try to take a neutral stance and consider both sides of an argument, but how could anyone let their child go back to a nursery once even just one anonymous complaint was made? I don't think I could ever let that go go.
11 days ago now my wife and I got a letter from the local Childrens Services department in Taunton. The first paragraph was terrifying as it said a complaint had been made naming our daughter. So for about 2 horrible seconds I thought I had been accused of something (or my wife), then it went on to say that it was in fact the owner of my daughters nursery that was accused anonymously of grabbing, dragging, shaking and yelling at her. It also said one other child had been named but that was anonymous to us.
So furious and confused I spoke to various departments, mainly Ofsted who are in charge of investigations.
It turns out that they were already investigating other issues by the time I got the letter. But they couldn't tell me what until the report is finalised.
I spoke to the owner of the nursery who denied hurting any children and said it was a girl who'd left the nursery who was maliciously trying to ruin her. Plausible, possibe, but not provable at this point. So we decided to pull her out of nursery until further news was available.
It feels morally uncomfortable to take one persons word for it, but as the potential risk was high we felt we needed to be cautious.
Since then Ofsted have not updated me much, they've confirmed that things are ongoing and there's now more than one complainer.
I'm fairly confident of who has made the complaint as a girl who worked at the nursery left to do teacher training and a couple of weeks later these complaints came in. I suspect she had a realisation of how many problems there were at her previous employer and so called Ofsted.
And last night the first public complaint was published by Ofsted in which the owner of the nursery has admitted falsifying the register to make it appear to Ofsted that they had the ocrroect ratio of adults to children. In fact they were breaking their license regulations and opened with too few adults.
So armed with that additional piece of evidence I feel alot happier not trusting the owner anymore.
Ofsted still want to speak to us in person, so I feel that this hasn't finished yet. There is more they want to tell us, which is scary, but the police aren't involved (or at least they weren't a week ago) so hopefully it's nothing that is going to traumatise anyone for too long.
I always try to take a neutral stance and consider both sides of an argument, but how could anyone let their child go back to a nursery once even just one anonymous complaint was made? I don't think I could ever let that go go.
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