primetime 27-5-13 creche expose [read mod notes in post #4 and #434]

eviltimeban

Lolajay wrote: »

I actually would have always assumed this stuff goes on in creches, it's horrible watching it but I've heard of so many people who wouldn't even see a creche as a last resort.

You shouldn't assume or paint them all the same; the creche my 3 year old is in is brilliant; its not part of a chain which makes the different. They have four seperate sections for the different age groups, and in the room my kid is in there are 3 girls for only about 10 - 12 kids. Same in all the other rooms. So they get all the attention they need.

The girls have been brilliant when it comes to feeding, potty training, teaching them reading and drawing, and all the food is home cooked and diet requirements are carefully considered (my kids are veggie).

That's the personal touch though - I personally wouldn't have considered a chain creche, but not all creches are like that.

Davidth88

You have to remember the primary motive for people running these places

MONEY.


They will do anything to cut costs .

hoodwinked

Davidth88 wrote: »

You have to remember the primary motive for people running these places

MONEY.


They will do anything to cut costs .

there are creches not being run for money too though,

dub_skav

To be honest if my kids were in any of the creches on the show I'd move them.
The problems were not those of individuals alone but of philosophy and management too.
People have said they will be under the spotlight etc, but i would not want to continue giving money to people who have been exposed with these damming breaches.
Those Links and giraffe branches losing all their kids would send an extremely strong message to the industry that if you are caught below the expected standard that parents will act

quinrea01

hoodwinked wrote: »

there are creches not being run for money too though,

Why would that be? Get real...follow the money, because that's what it's ALL about. By the way has anyone considered the possibility that the HSE were fully aware of all the negative aspects of these creches but chose not to push too hard for reform, or indeed probable redundancies, in case many of the staff ended up on the Live Register?...Just sain', like!!!

saggycaggy

Lolajay wrote: »

As mentioned in the programme, staff cannot be blamed, these places normally have a high staff turnover, money is bad, girls are young and childcare qualifications are relatively easy to acquire. One doesn't need a leaving cert to get access to these babies during their fundamental development years.
.

While understaffed creches seems to be a big issue here that is no excuse for the way these children were treated. These people chose this career and knew it would be hard (and it is hard, I couldn't do it all day) so they have to be able to deal with certain situations. I'd imagine if I was working in a creche and it was understaffed I would go to my boss/report it/ask for help but no way would I ever treat children like this- no excuse.

Hannibal Smith

Lolajay wrote: »

Hmm, I watched last nights show with interest and I absolutely agree that the footage shown was disgusting, highly inappropriate and vile.

That said, I do not have children but I have 3 close friends with infants aged under 3. All of them independently made decisions not to put their children in creche's despite the inconvenience because it's pretty well known that kids are not treated well in most of them. Even if they are not being shouted at, strapped to chairs, kept in high chairs and slammed on to mattresses it is fairly accepted that the children in these places (mostly understaffed by HSE basic standards) are not given sufficient attention. If you have a child who is quiet they will most likely be ignored as something else is more urgent for the staff whose attention seems to be taken up with loud children, so, children who are struggling/crying will develop a reinforced belief that this gets them attention and quiet children will lose confidence and self esteem (over long periods of exposure to this)

As mentioned in the programme, staff cannot be blamed, these places normally have a high staff turnover, money is bad, girls are young and childcare qualifications are relatively easy to acquire. One doesn't need a leaving cert to get access to these babies during their fundamental development years.

I actually would have always assumed this stuff goes on in creches, it's horrible watching it but I've heard of so many people who wouldn't even see a creche as a last resort.

I don't agree with this at all. Whilst your kid may not get the close attention they get at home, in a good creche no kid gets overlooked and the quiet ones are just as encouraged as everyone else. They have all different types of play to suit the children and they will be able to discover their own interests and likes.

hoodwinked

quinrea01 wrote: »

Why would that be? Get real...follow the money, because that's what it's ALL about. By the way has anyone considered the possibility that the HSE were fully aware of all the negative aspects of these creches but chose not to push too hard for reform, or indeed probable redundancies, in case many of the staff ended up on the Live Register?...Just sain', like!!!

because not all creches are a for profit business, in the university i go to, the creche is quite simply there to look after the children of staff and students, its a purposefully built new building, and if it makes a loss its absorbed as its run in conjunction with other uni businesses who do turn profits, aka they make their money elsewhere and use it to fund the service that is the creche,

there are no cost cutting measures there and its ethos is very pro-child rather than budgetary, everyone who is involved with the service is on a salary rather than out to make profits,


it also costs far less then other 'business' creches in the local area so if it was all about the money they'd be upping what we pay.



and what about community creches? they aren't about making a profit either?

pwurple

Davidth88 wrote: »

You have to remember the primary motive for people running these places

MONEY.


They will do anything to cut costs .

It would be fairly eady to fix it if it was just for money. Litigate. Sue the arse off them for pain and suffering. That would make it incredibly expensive to ever mistreat a child.

The people on the program were showing some serious cruelty. I don't think any amount of money would fix their personalities and what appeared to be their dislike for children. They are in the wrong job from the get go.

I wonder how the children react to her when going in the door.

listermint

Is this on RTE player? cant seem to find it only shows the after show discussion.


anyone ?

lazygal

listermint wrote: »

Is this on RTE player? cant seem to find it only shows the after show discussion.


anyone ?

No, AFAIK the parents requested that it only be shown once. I'd imagine their privacy and other concerns come first. Morning Ireland said as much.

How Strange

I saw the docu last night and like most people I was disgusted with the footage. Those poor toddlers being thrown around was truly shocking but also the level of aggression towards the children at sleep time, at meal time and the appalling disciplinary measures.

I think if my child was included in this footage my heart would break. I don't think I'd ever get over it or trust someone to look after them again.

I truly hope that the parents of those toddlers in Links take legal action for the physical abuse we saw. Incidentally there's been calls for CCTV in all crèches now but that Links had CCTV and it didn't prevent those kids being man handled like that.

We've always appreciated that we've got a good crèche but now even more so. The staff are lovely and they seem genuinely motivated to work with children. I've never had a reason to doubt the level of care and when we've had minor bumps I've raised them with the manager and they've been resolved.

I think there's a lot of knee jerk crèche bashing going on at the moment and it's a shame to tar every place with the one brush.

Davidth88

hoodwinked wrote: »

there are creches not being run for money too though,

TBH , that could be the answer , community creches.

The most expensive thing in creches has to be manpower, hense they are paid a pittance ( considering the work they are doing ) , often break guidelines ( rules ?? ) regarding numbers.

It's not that different to the care homes for the old people , the owners often see these as money making machines.

listermint

lazygal wrote: »

No, AFAIK the parents requested that it only be shown once. I'd imagine their privacy and other concerns come first. Morning Ireland said as much.

Fair enough i suppose. But pretty poor for a supposed exposed documentary. Channel 4 or BBC would have it available.

quinrea01

hoodwinked wrote: »

because not all creches are a for profit business, in the university i go to, the creche is quite simply there to look after the children of staff and students, its a purposefully built new building, and if it makes a loss its absorbed as its run in conjunction with other uni businesses who do turn profits, aka they make their money elsewhere and use it to fund the service that is the creche,

there are no cost cutting measures there and its ethos is very pro-child rather than budgetary, everyone who is involved with the service is on a salary rather than out to make profits,


it also costs far less then other 'business' creches in the local area so if it was all about the money they'd be upping what we pay.



and what about community creches? they aren't about making a profit either?

As for University creches, how much do your annual college registration fees cost now???..the provision of a creche for a few students is little enough compared to the collossal income the colleges get from students hard-pressed parents. Seems like a very small sacrifice, really. Community creches are not what we are talking about here. I'm sure these are above reproach, simply because the people involved actually CARE about the kids. What we are concerned about here is the mainly unregulated and rarely inspected baby farms which operate entirely for profit, are owned bu mega-rich entrepreneurs and staffed by unsuitable and badly paid young women.

seamus

Sparks wrote: »

and the giraffe suits are busily trying to do anything to keep parents from fleeing;

This is actually another part of the whole mess; there's a massive deficit in creche places. While of course creches are worried about being left high and dry, the massive waiting lists to just get into a creche in the first place means that they only have to do the bare minimum to hold onto clients. "Oh we suspended that person". Grand, job done, parents justify it to themselves that it was just one bad apple and not a failing of the creche's processes.

Plenty of parents, no doubt like yourself, have the resources to say that they'll up and move the child if they're unhappy, but plenty of others don't (or at least think that they don't). In most other scenarios, people would vote with their feet and the whole industry would regulate itself quite well. But at the moment it's simply not an option for many, so there's little incentive for creches to improve themselves. This is reflected in the stats that showed that a majority of creches who had failings in an inspection hadn't bothered to fix those failings when the HSE came back again.

Davidth88 wrote: »

You have to remember the primary motive for people running these places
MONEY.
They will do anything to cut costs .

Well, yes, it's a business. Really the issue here is that if staff are poorly paid across the board, including creches run as non-profit, while parents are paying big money, then clearly there's a pit somewhere else that the money is being poured into. Creches run as business are of course going to try and maximise profits, so unless we're going to insist that all creches are run as non-profit, we have to identify the reasons why costs are so high for all creches. There's no way we could insist that all creches are run non-profit. The industry would be decimated overnight and aside from a small number of areas where parents made a concerted effort to set up their own creche, the HSE would need to step in and set up public creches, and many parents would move to childminders, who are even less regulated and visible than creches.

I know one issue for creches is insurance. Perhaps it would be worth setting up the HSE as a mandatory insurer, with creches paying a fixed price per child. This would allow us to both subsidise the cost of insurance, but also give greater visibility on what's happening inside the creche. If a creche has more than 3 successful claims against them in a year, you double their inspection schedule. More than 6 claims, you have a massive audit of the facility. And so forth.
Once you have the cost of insurance dropped, then you can look at minimum wages for creche workers.

I honestly thought CCTV would have been mandatory in all creches. At the bare minimum a creche should be completely wired up with parents given access to the feed. CCTV is useless if nobody's monitoring it. In reality all creches should be required to store 3 months of footage and the HSE should be able to demand any amount of footage from any point in that 3 months and have it supplied to them within an hour. Failure to comply should be a €10k fine.

xzanti

seamus wrote: »

"Oh we suspended that person". Grand, job done, parents justify it to themselves that it was just one bad apple and not a failing of the creche's processes.
.

I think what disturbed me most, apart from the obvious blatant cruelty to some of the children.. was the commerarody between the staff members when it came to covering things up..

I would have previously been of the opinion that a creche was a safer environment for a small child in that if there was a bad apple among the staff, abuse would be witnessed and (hopefully) reported.. as opposed to leaving a child with one child minder all day.. safety in numbers and all that.. but it would appear I was wrong..

They definitely seemed to have each other's backs in the footage shown last night.

Bewildering.

mariaalice

Ruining a crèche for profit does not make someone the devil, it can still be a well run and child centred it is down to good management and not being too cost conscious, its is like the person who told me about crèches who expected the staff to be cleaners as well as child care workers, she was immediately suspicious of the place.

Use you common sense if you are considering a crèche.

Ask about staff turn over, ask how much per houre/ year are the staff paid.
.
Ask how many of the staff are qualified

Are they generous with staff, do they go beyond the minimum staff/child ratio.
.
Ask are the staff expected to clean/cook/or wash-up as well as be childcare staff

Ask about training are staff paid while on training are staff expected to pay for their own training.

Visit the place several time.

Crumpet

It is unfair, and really I'm getting a bit offended at reading stuff like "I'd never put my children in a creche", "all creches are the same", "if I had a child in one of those chains, I'd take him out immediately".... Yeah well, maybe things aren't that black and white! What if your childminder abuses your child? Who's going to see that? What if you and your partner need to work full time? What if you've no family here? What do you do? Seriously, what other options are there??? I'd love to know...
As for changing creche, good luck with that, especially with a two year old! We're hoping to move to a different area soon and so far I have had a look at 5 creches: all full with waiting lists or else they close at 5.30pm (5.30pm for Christ sake!!!), or had kids running around the place screaming with doors wide open and the place stank of sh#t, after-schoolers playing with a WII (if I wanted my child to play the WII I'd keep him home!) or with an outdoor area so small you wouldn't leave your dog there. So yes my son goes to Giraffe, not in Belarmine, but yes he goes to - oh horror - a big chain of creches. It's two minutes from my place, he jumps into the girls arms every morning, has loads of painting and photos of him dressing up, plays with playdough, sand, water, messy play, loves hid buddies and I called up unannounced quite a few times, sometimes while he was still asleep, and never witnessed anything else than caring people. And since he was 4 months old he would scream at the sight of a new face... that stopped within a month of being in the creche.
At the end of the day, we all do what we can, and yes, if he'd been in Belarmine, I couldn't have stand going in again and probably would have moved him, but he's fine where he is now and I just cannot take the extra guilt on board. It's heartbreaking enough it is.

doubletrouble?

we haven't seen the programme yet, just whats in the media about it be disturbing. just a few points on the thread though.

inspectors:
once they put their foot at the door of any business word spreads like wildfire, staff run around like headless chickens and before you know it it's all rosy. if this was an inspector doing their rounds instead of the spy i dont think we'd have had the issues that came to light.

R.T.E + undercover programmes:
alot of people had problems with rte sending in a spy. what they did was probably morally wrong but according to the posts here i'd rather have someone do this type of thing where the truth comes out than a cover up. we all know dirt sells, they put out the progamme, ratings soared but the truth still came out. these sort of programmes are the only way we're going to get the real truth about goes on. these all over the T.V. and they're becoming more and more popular. this isn't the first time rte have done this sort of thing and it certainly wont be the last.
again going back to the posts i think no matter which way rte went about getting the dirt we must all be thankful that they did

indians and chiefs ( staff and management).
is nearly all cases it's the staff that suffer. while management get away scott free. no doubt these people who were caught abusing the kids will say it's their first time, once off etc.

bull****

. this would've been going on for a long time. management would've had some idea but like most things in this country theres always a blind eye turned until it's to late. it starts at the bottom and has to end at the top somewhere. serious rules were broken, serious breaches were committed. what i'm saying is the buck stops with management.

as for creche fees. like most people we are feeling the pinch of the recession, posters talk of around €1k per month. to put our pair into our local creche would be in the region of €1800 per month full time.

doubletrouble?

xzanti wrote: »

I think what disturbed me most, apart from the obvious blatant cruelty to some of the children.. was the commerarody between the staff members when it came to covering things up..

I would have previously been of the opinion that a creche was a safer environment for a small child in that if there was a bad apple among the staff, abuse would be witnessed and (hopefully) reported.. as opposed to leaving a child with one child minder all day.. safety in numbers and all that.. but it would appear I was wrong..

They definitely seemed to have each other's backs in the footage shown last night.

Bewildering.

a friend of mine worked in a creche as an ordinary carer, went and got a managers job somewhere else. within a couple of weeks she had to leave as all the staff stuck together as one big click,they blanked her. she told me for the extra few quid a week it wasn't worth the hastle.

vitani

xzanti wrote: »

I think what disturbed me most, apart from the obvious blatant cruelty to some of the children.. was the commerarody between the staff members when it came to covering things up..

I would have previously been of the opinion that a creche was a safer environment for a small child in that if there was a bad apple among the staff, abuse would be witnessed and (hopefully) reported.. as opposed to leaving a child with one child minder all day.. safety in numbers and all that.. but it would appear I was wrong..

They definitely seemed to have each other's backs in the footage shown last night.

Bewildering.

That's the reason I chose a creche instead of a childminder - the idea that there was safety in numbers.

Thankfully, I have few concerns about the creche I use. It's a small place, not part of a chain, and the staff turnover is practically non-existant. My daughter's been in it for over a year and a half and I don't think there's been one new member of staff in that time. She goes in smiling every day and I know that quite a few of the workers are very fond of her. Some of them even buy hair clips and bobbins out of their own money and bring them in to do the children's hair.

It does terrify me though that I don't know exactly what goes on during the day. I deliberately didn't watch most of the programme last night because I don't want to torture myself with what could be happening.

mariaalice

In some way I thought the crèche in Wicklow was almost the worst, even though they did not manhandle the children the place came across as very poor the lack of supervision of the children and the apathetic staff came across as very neglectfully.

doubletrouble?

Crumpet wrote: »

What if your childminder abuses your child? Who's going to see that? What if you and your partner need to work full time? What if you've no family here? What do you do? Seriously, what other options are there??? I'd love to know...

vaild point crumpet, but as the saying goes " no one knows what goes on behind closed doors." no truer words have ever been said. both of us work full time, we basically have no family due to personal reasons. we've had to take on au pairs as it's the only thing we can afford. we'll watch the programme later and see what we think.

aoife524

Does anyone have the link to the actual footage? Missed it last night!

gabrielIT

Nesf, I do agree with you.

the biggest mistake public opinion and parents would make is to start discussing "politically" on the funding issues, the public-private issue and let the real problem being let aside. as you say the main point is how to react in the short term and launch an immediate audit plan for existing creches around the country where you can have a transparent and clear view of the status quo. setting a timeline, ambitious maybe, and work with the creches to set out visible plans for training, upskilling of existing staff and assigning a project manager for each center to work with all involved.
If one carer does not have a first aid certification, what do you do? if a carer has no basic qualification how can we demand that this profession has a strong "vocational" accent?
we need to go back to the basics and let the mid-long term considerations aside for few months because as we speak regulation 5 has been breached by over 40% of the center inspected! regulation 5 is the pillar, the core of child care idea.
for what concerns the money matter I see it quite simple and I make a little example: If I run a coffee bar and some customers get food poisoning after eating in my place, complain and I get an HSE visit I will be told to rectify immediately any wrong doing and, for instance, change a fridge or a cooker. I cannot simply say: "sorry if I invest in a new fridge I will go out of business". this is the same here, nothing against creches being driven by profit. But if you cannot comply you CLOSE the doors and leave the industry.

Hobbitfeet

What I seen last night was child abuse, physical, emotional, physiological abuse. Both the management and the staff involved should be prosecuted. If any of that happened to my child I would be pressing charges immediately. Maybe when the sector sees that instances like this are fully dealt with and carry abuse charges and possible prison sentences then they will be less likely to occur again.

summer00

I watched the program last night and was disgusted and horrified also but I have to agree with Crumpet, not all chain creches are like this and I too am getting annoyed with comments about "how people wouldnt put there child in a creche even as a last option".

Well some people dont have an option and have to put there children in creches! My son is in a "chain" creche, not one of the ones that was featured but a chain creche all the same. We are very happy with the level of care he receives and he enjoys being there and they have taught him so much from counting to colours and lots more.
Our "chain" creche has CCTV in every room that parents can log onto at any time which I find very reassuring.

I just dont think all creches should be tainted with the same brush!

gabrielIT

Crumpet, I think that you would agree with me that there is no transparency in this business.
Did you see the program last night? I go to Giraffe too and discovered that my creche has a serious of regulations breaches.

of course I rely also on my baby's reaction and positive development and interaction with the childcare staff but I would like to know before I bring my son to the creche for 8 hours a day if all staff is qualified, if they have pending complaints, which procedures are followed for staff breaks, training, re-training and so on.

If the Top management of a company allows an impressive list of breaches to happen (in case of Giraffe there were multiple in different centers) how are we guaranteed that those things will not happen in our creche?

we should stand together as parents and demand to have a full disclosure of the status quo. this is what I want to do with my creche and other parents.

gqma0

I've seen a thread about CCTV but the links in Malahide have CCTV. Management has no excuse there and the business owners are at fault too. I also hope that the finger pointing game to who's to blame will not become the main focus in there.

Also, the fact that the numbers for ECCE were made up is a fraudulent practice.

I would sincerely hope that the parents will take legal actions towards the premises and that legal pursuits for Little Harvard will follow up.

For those who consider this practice not as bad as it seemed are in complete denial. They might as well take any strangers out in the street to look after their children.