CharlieN's Reviews
Parent
Below are the reviews that CharlieN has written.
I don't like to leave negative reviews, however I feel that I have to communicate my experience. We visited Suzy back in April and were left very concerned. The house was dirty and there were security hazards everywhere. A dining chair left on the stairs in place of a stairgate which was broken, hair straighteners plugged in and left within reach, a glass tv cabinet door propped up against the cabinet. The sleeping area was cramped with 3 beds in a small room, and smelt a bit mouldy with old bedding. The kitchen was filthy with dirty pans over hanging the worktops and piled high. It might have been a bad day however we sent our son elsewhere.
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by
CharlieN
about
Suzyskidycare
on 15/11/2018
Started off well but deteriorated to serious concerns over the care of our son. They refused to listen to our complaints over a period of months and refused to accept that our sons nappy rash was caused by them. He went 4 days a week and when dropped off was fine but by the end of the week was in pain. Despite mentioning this repeatedly over a period of 2 months nothing changed and finally Kim's partner told us (aggressively) not to come back if we didn't like it which goes against the complaint process and Ofsted procedures for complaints.
Never provided any EYFS observations for our son’s development, this should have included Observations, Evaluations and Next Steps. This was despite several requests for this information. The childminder claimed that this was done but to date we have still not received any information despite a formal complaint being made 6 months ago. Updates on food, nappies and naps were infrequent and deteriorated in frequency during his time in this setting, the Babyday’s systems was not used for any updates and on many occasions we had to ask for updates.
She leaves children unsupervised and watches them on her phone via CCTV camera whilst she spends time with her daughter who she keeps separately in another room. This comment is based on a conversation between myself and the childminder when challenged about how she watches children in 2 different rooms simultaneously, the childminder has since denied that she made this statement. She has an assistant which allows her to take more than 3 children, however, he works from home so is not available fully and we only saw him once in 3 months so we do not believe that she meets Ofsted child to adult ratio. At one point she had 5 children under 5 at the setting (that we saw), and we did not see an assistant present at drop off or pickup. She also had at least 2 other children over 5 after school that we saw.
She started giving our son time outs without our consent and against guidance. This is not recommended for children under 2 and we have no idea when she started doing this as she never consulted us on it or told us when she had done this. We found out when she told us it had worked, at the time my son was only 17 months. To date we have still not received any explanation for this, or details as to why he was put in time out, despite a formal complain being in process.
She leaves the children in 2 small rooms all day and never takes them outside, not to groups, to the park, or even the garden. It weas our experience that from June 2018 – March 2019 we were only infomraed that he had been in the garden on two occasions, as this dated back to July. Our son was going crazy at the end of each day when we picked him up to the point that we had to take him for a walk everyday when we got home. This might be fine for a baby but not for a toddler or older. The childminder has since claimed that she took him to feed duck and to the park, this was never our experience and we were not told, or shown photos of this.
Broke most of her own policies including Raising Concerns (our concerns regarding our sons care and frequent nappy rash were not taken seriously or investigated), Complaints Procedure (we are still waiting for a response to our formal compliant dating back to April 2019, and informal complaints dating back to January 2019), Childminding Observation Policy (we received no information on Observations made during his 9 months in this setting and therefore no learning priorities or plans were put in place make early learning goals), Behaviour (by implementing time outs on our child without providing reason for this either in writing or verbally), Care, Learning and Play (our son did not take part in outings, gardening or outdoor play from July to March which are activities which should have been included), Working in Partnership with Parents (The Babydays system was not used. This policy also states that written updates will be provided daily in full, we only received full updates 4% of the time.)
When we complained formally she removed our access to the Baby Days system where our contract is, and where we are supposed to get daily updates. Despite several formal requests dating back to March, as of September she has still not provided us with access to any Observations, and to our contract. As a result we have had to refer her to the ICO to retrieve this information. She also allowed her partner to terminate our contract because we complained, this was part way through a month we had fully paid for so she owes us £751 for the remainder of that month and over paid holiday pay, and we were without childcare for a month until our son could start at a nursery.
As mentioned above we are still waiting for a response to our complaint dating back 6 months which is being ignored. In addition we raised these issues with Ofsted who as a result conducted a full inspection on her. The made several recommendations for her to improve on, which includes:
“To further improve the quality of the early years provision the provider should:
1. focus future professional development choices on the teaching and learning needs of children
2. extend partnership working with parents to find ways to engage with those who are 'hard to reach'
3. strengthen the use of information gained from the chosen software program to support more confident observation and assessment of children's learning.”
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