BBC News Online: Education

Tighter checks for nurseries, says report

The report into Newcastle City Council's handling of allegations of abuse at one of its nurseries has highlighted the need for tougher checks on staff and the need for a more effective response to complaints from parents.

Among the report's 75 recommendations are calls for tighter monitoring of the running of nurseries, tighter vetting in the recruitment process, better record-keeping and improved training of staff.

The discovery of systematic abuse at the nursery led the report to condemn an inadequate regulatory system, which it says allowed nurseries to be run more for the benefit of staff than children.

Staff in nurseries failed to recognise signs of distress in children, the report says, and the process of recording staff qualifications was "extremely misleading and potentially dangerous".

"We highlight a lack of guidance, procedures not being followed, poor practice, bad management and poor co-ordination," said Dr Richard Barker, leader of the independent report team.

The most important conclusion, he said, was that the better the standard of service to children, the fewer problems were likely to occur - leading him to call for an overall improvement in child care provision.

The importance of protecting children from abusers was likely to grow in the future, said Dr Barker, as "more children than ever before will be cared for outside their families, with child minders, in nurseries, and in after-school clubs."

"Wherever children are gathered together they present a potential target for those who seek to abuse them - people who have a disposition to abuse children, either sexually or otherwise - will seek to have access to them."

In response to the report, Newcastle City Council has promised to implement an action plan of improvements, under the supervision of the Social Services Inspectorate.

The report on nursery care in Newcastle is likely to add to the debate on the need for a coherent national approach to regulating nurseries and play groups.

An estimated three-quarters of three and four-year-olds are in pre-school classes or child care, with the number set to rise.

These pre-school providers include state and private primary schools, local authority nurseries, voluntary sector groups, private nurseries and individual child minders.

These facilities are supervised by a range of regulatory bodies, including education, health and social services.

In response to concerns that banned staff might be evading detection by moving between different types of pre-school care, the government last week announced that a central list of people deemed unsuitable to work with children would be put on a statutory basis.

Relevant Stories

Angry parents prepare to sue (12 Nov 98 | UK)
Abuse 'conspiracy' at council nursery (12 Nov 98 | Education)

Internet Links

Newcastle City Council
NSPCC

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Links to other Education stories