Bad Nurseries opinions and advice required

Hi

New here so please be nice.

I am a mum of a 7 yr old myself and have a friend with a 3 yr old. she recently collected her daughter from nursery and her daughter's friend had cut a chunk of hair off with scissors. Nursery claims children properly supervised and teacher must have simply "turned her back for a moment" they also say that the only scissors the children have access to are children's safety scissors, well when my friend and i met with the teacher and the head several "interesting" things were said:

1 class teacher initially said there WERE adult scissors in the room that were being used by the adults but the kids couldn't possibly have got them

2 When the head took the meeting over the story changed to the only scissors in the room were the safety scissors

3 that they would "reinforce" with THE CHILDREN not to touch dangerous objects

4 when i (a former childminder which is why my friend took me) said that they should also consider reinforcing the message of supervision with the staff i was told quite bluntly that this was not necessary and that they considered it an insult that i even said so

5 no apology was forthcoming for at least 10 minutes

6 my friend also has health problems and the nursery has in the past provided extra hours for her daughter to support her in getting treatment, they were basically raising this to try and make my friend feel guilty for having even made a complaint in the 1st place.

7 they brought a pair of scissors into the meeting - they would not cut hair and we proved this

8 they have since told my friend that she had no business mentioning the situation to other parents. They did not tell the mother of the girl who had cut the hair anything about the incident. When they discovered that my friend had, they told her again to mind her own business and not to talk to this lady, that if this lady wanted to make a complaint it was up to her - bit difficult seeing as the mother concerned hadn't even been told of the incident.

9 My friend had to ask 4 times for an incident report

10 My friends daughter has since had another accident at the same nursery and cut her cheek falling on a toy. Yes kids do hurt themselves BUT AGAIN she had to fight to get an incident report!

Any advice/comments would be greatly appreciated. All I could say to her was that if it was my child I would remove her from the nursery, make a formal complaint to the nursery, council (it's council run) and the care commission (for those not in Scotland that's what we have here instead of ofsted, although HMIE does the inspections) which she is doing.

i would have made a loud noise and made sure that all the parents knew what happened!!!

I would also remove my child and made a complaint to the LEA

see me too!! but her hubby and mum are type not to make a fuss and they've got her 2nd guessing herself

I can see how the incident could have happened, it does only take a second of turning one's back to have children get themselves in trouble... but.... the way they staff responded to her complaint and the way she was treated would have me livid!! I don't think I'd be very comfortable bringing my child back to a place that treated me that way!!

Good luck to your friend and her situation, that's a tough one!

kmum said:
see me too!! but her hubby and mum are type not to make a fuss and they've got her 2nd guessing herself

i would im loud and proud!

What an awful situation. As Tammy said i can see how it could have happened but the fact they were so rude and changed their stories about what scissors were there in the first place would have me removing my child from the nursery.
My daughter goes to a mother and toddler session at a preschool where all the kids including the toddlers are integrated together. They are fantastic at incident reports. My daughter fell and banged her head a while back and they filled an incident form out immediately and gave me a form to sign to say i was aware of the accident along with health information ie.what signs to look out for as she had banged her head? It was only a slight bump and Lolly was fine, she was more concerned we had stopped her playing to look at the bump than the actual bump itself . This kind of response to an accident is what i would expect from a nursery or preschool!