Justchildcare Reviews 

Utterly horrendous experience of Just Childcare. The takeover of my daughter’s nursery in Shevington was easily the worst thing to ever happen to me and my daughter. When it was under Carol Middletown’s management, it was the most amazing little nursery. The staff were all incredible and had been there years (testament to the previous owners) and many were related. It felt like walking into a family home. My daughter loved the staff as though they were her aunties. When Toni was instated as manager (which was an insult to Carol), pretty much all the staff left. As a parent, it was quite obvious that the ratio of teachers to children was not sufficient. Mums would share pictures in the WhatsApp group of their toddlers with nasty scratches and bite marks where children had clearly not been separated quickly enough. There was a point where my daughter was being sent home for ridiculous things and it definitely felt as though it was a bid to keep numbers down - I was of course being charged for these days. The staff numbers were low and faces would change from one day to the next. Despite years of my daughter attending, it became difficult to tell who was staff and who was parents. I went to collect my daughter a couple of times when the kids were playing in the playground, and despite the agency staff having never seen me, I was able to take my daughter without even providing a security word, and without a permanent member of staff being called. Permanent staff appeared run into the ground and one point, one member appeared to be doing several people’s jobs. I understand why staff don’t stay in those conditions.

The manager Toni, a couple of months after joining the nursery, after having never met or spoken to me, and having no relationship with my daughter (she was office based, unlike the previous manger who was extremely hands on) made false allegations about me to the father of my child, to children’s services, and the health visitors team. She said several things that were factually incorrect but the worst was when she claimed she was concerned about the amount of medication I was sending my child in with. She claimed that I was excessively and unnecessarily medicating my daughter and implied that I have munchausen by proxy. When my daughter’s father told me this, I of course didn’t believe him as, over a 2 year period, my daughter had been sent in with eczema cream, eye drops, and treatment for nappy rash. When I had to defend against these claims in court, I had to contact Toni as she actually possessed the proof that they were nonsense (medical forms). She left shortly after causing the chaos - which has ruined the last 2 years of my life. Just Childcare have been very blasé and failed to acknowledge their negligence in allowing their management to make wild allegations that could have had my daughter taken away. In no world would I recommend any facility owned by this vile, morally bankrupt organisation.

The most awful company I’ve ever worked for. They don’t care about the children, it was literally our jobs to make sure we had a smile on our face and keep the parents coming through the door, even though all the staff were overworked and most of the time out of ratio whilst the manager used to sit in her office drinking cups of teas. When I took this compliant to head office they said it’s not the managers job to be in the room, she has paperwork to do. So the paperwork is more important than the childrens health and well-being? I would never put my children in a just childcare nursery after seeing what happens behind closed doors. On inspection days, staff would be sent from different nurseries to cover ratios and look like everything was running smoothly but then it would all go back to normal as soon as inspection was over. And all of this whit the staff were paid minimum wage, the manager sat comfortably scrolling through social media on her phone. Not only that but she was disgustingly racist, on show around with parents she would take her time and put in a lot of effort if they were white, but with any one of colour would rush them out the door and then talk and laugh about them with another co worker. The level of unprofessionalism was unreal and head office did not care as long spaces were being filled. Honestly if you care about your children at all, avoid this place like the plague! The best thing I ever did was get out! Light needs shedding on what goes on here because it’s the poor children and staff the miss out. Can’t believe they are still allowed to stay open after the stuff I saw and the way that manager behaved. So unprofessional, if you don’t care about the children why work in childcare in the first place?!

We've just removed our child from a nursery run by Just Childcare due to a poorly managed incident in which our baby became ill with heat exhaustion during the recent heatwave (summer 2018). Just Childcare handled this incident extremely poorly and unprofessionally, ultimately denying any responsibility for our child becoming unwell during their care and astonishingly even going so far as to outright deny the doctor's medical diagnosis of heat illness (the regional manager who gave this 'medical diagnosis' has no medical qualifications and made the diagnosis from CCTV footage).

Background: The nursery is in a grade 2 listed building with small windows which do not fully open resulting in poor ventilation, the rooms were stiflingly hot during the recent heat wave. Prior to the incident, we were concerned about how hot the baby rooms were getting and raised concerns but these were not acted upon. No temperature monitoring was in place in any of the rooms to safeguard the children.

On the day of the incident the nursery called us to collect our baby early as he was unwell and had a rash appearing. On collecting him, we found that the baby room was swelteringly hot, like the inside of a car on a hot day. We were lucky enough to get an immediate doctor’s appointment and took him directly there. The doctor examined our baby and found him to be suffering from the effects of heat. Heat exhaustion can lead to heat stroke which can result in organ failure and death. Excessive heat in children is also linked to SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome). Our baby had symptoms of heat exhaustion.

We requested a meeting with management to discuss our child becoming ill in the care of the nursery. It took a week to get anyone from Just Childcare's management to call us back, apparently heat exhaustion in a child is not very important. We finally managed to get a meeting set up with the regional manager. We asked for:

- Some means of cooling the baby rooms in hot weather (ideally air conditioning / climate control).
- Temperature monitoring to be put into place.
- A process to be put into place in hot weather to ensure this does not happen again.
- Most importantly, for an upper temperature limit to be set to protect the children, so that if the heat in the baby room gets too high then some action is taken.

The management took two weeks to consider our requests and 'investigate'. Their eventual response was as follows:

“Having studied CCTV and discussing and collecting statements from/with the staff I can only conclude that there was no evidence that (child's name) was suffering from heat exhaustion whilst in the care of nursery"

We are very concerned and frankly astonished at this response. Essentially the two week 'investigation' Just Childcare carried out was not to prevent this type of incident occurring again, rather it was primarily to deny any involvement or accountability for our son becoming ill from the heat whilst in their care. They did not provide any of the information we asked for, would not install any form of climate control in the baby room and would not set an upper temperature limit to protect the children in their care.

Most incredulous is the fact that Just Childcare believes that an administrative manager, who is NOT a medical professional, has no medical qualifications and was not even on site at the time of the incident, can overrule the medical opinion of a doctor and make a medical diagnosis of a child based on CCTV footage. This is a very dangerous precedent.

JustChildcare put profit before the safety of children, and their internal process management and response to this incident is appalling at best. Find another nursery group. Your child's well-being is too important to trust to a company that shirks basic responsibility.

As a side note, we asked the regional manager if the offices of JustChildcare are air conditioned, she declined to answer.