On Monday (7th April 2025) the BBC aired a documentary called ‘How Safe Are Our Nurseries?’ and there was a lot of debate about the content across the BBC platforms and in other media. You can see the accompanying article here.
The case which the documentary focused on was the tragic death of baby Genevieve Meehan in a nursery in Stockport in 2024. This was a horrific but thankfully rare case and the nursery worker involved was convicted of manslaughter and received a 14 year sentence.
The documentary focused on the Ofsted inspection cycle and the reported manipulation of the inspector’s views by some settings. Whilst this is unacceptable behaviour and we have heard that this does happen, we are confident that for the vast majority of our members, and within our own settings, this is not the case. Some of the practitioners interviewed talked about working well outside of ratios on a routine basis which is shockingly bad practice. Again, we know that this is not the case generally and we have many conversations with members who are extremely cautious about always meeting and often going above statutory requirements. No parent should be concerned about how their child will be looked after when they entrust them to an early years setting.
The documentary should make us all reflect on our own practice and consider what our response would be should we witness something we know is wrong. We are grateful for those staff who have stepped up and reported when they have seen something that they were not comfortable with and we encourage all settings and in particular senior staff to be open to hearing when things aren’t right and acting on that information.
Figures were quoted in the documentary about the number of ‘serious incidents’ reported to Ofsted. This was equated to 75 per week and the implication was that this related to the number of children being harmed per week. It’s important to note that Ofsted only have one form for reporting serious incidents and this can be everything from allegations of serious harm (which may or may not be substantiated) to fire or flood in the setting, and for childminders and the Nominated Individual changes to their health (see the ‘detailed guidance’ here). Additionally as the guidance is relatively vague there can be a tendency to over-report to ensure that nothing is missed. This was acknowledged by Ofsted recently when they published a blog (see here) in February stating that “We have found we are often notified about incidents we don’t necessarily need to know about”
It is very unfortunate that this documentary comes following a series of difficult and damaging announcements in the sector. Firstly the tightening of the application of the rules around funding and the encouragement by some in the media for parents to refuse to pay for additional ‘voluntary’ services, and secondly the announcement last week of the 300 ‘new’ School Based Nurseries and the messaging that these are better for children than the current provision (see our previous blog further down the page).
Families are best served by having a range of provision open to them which is high quality, well funded and best suited to their needs. The vast majority of early years providers and practitioners work extremely hard in very challenging circumstances to make this happen despite low funding rates and the constant message from the government and media that they are not doing enough. We want to support both practitioners and families to ensure that our children are as safe and well cared for as possible and we know that this is a shared aim with our members.
