RTÉ Investigates tonight (21:35): Crèches, Behind Closed Doors

Tombo2001

superleedsdub wrote: »

It takes 2-2.5 weeks to get Garda vetted, I have been vetted 3 times in the last 2 years for volunteering with Age action, hosting students and with the FAI as a football coach.

Took me two months.

Boggles

Tombo2001 wrote: »

Took me two months.

Maybe something popped up that needed further investigating.

DavyD_83

The show did seem very focused on creating outrage and fear at what may be happemng in your child's crèche.
That woman should clearly not be allowed operate a crèche, or work in any childcare related area based on what we saw.
Based on the evidence, this feels like it should have been a show about the inefficiencies and failures in the regulations that were supposedly implemented, with H&S used as an example of these failures.

There was surprisingly little focus on the negligence of Tusla, who identified all these issues on 2014 (and claim to have investigated the crèche every year since) but allow the crèche to continue to operate as is.
Also, RE: Garda vetting, I find it very odd that there was no comment, or statement regarding the average time it currently takes to get Garda vetting.
If it is quick and simple, surely they would have said "Garda vetting which can be completed in 24hrs/a week", but I suspect they didn't because it is itself another disorganised public system. I was involved in scouts in the past and getting Garda vetting completed was always red tape that caused unreasonable delays.

None of this is to defend Ann Davy in any way; if happily help her get to sleep any evening.
In fact, I'd suggest somebody calls to get house at bedtime every night to ensure she gets to sleep in the most caring way possible using her tried and tested method:
Face down, hand on middle of the back, face pushed onto mattress any time you try to move or object; I think that was the basics, I might have missed something. I'm sure she'd appreciate the caring assistance. (Would love a creative judge to prescribe this for a month as part of her sentence).

superleedsdub

Tombo2001 wrote: »

Took me two months.

Fair enough, I stand corrected :-) Was that for childcare, perhaps it's a longer process for that?

Plopsu

One eyed Jack wrote: »

Y’know, it’s perfectly feasible for a couple to live within their means, y’know, while they both take responsibility for their children’s rearing and welfare instead of paying eye-watering crèche fees because they also want to be in employment.

You really just don't live on the same planet as the rest of us, do you. Many people struggle to make ends meet. It's nothing to do with living outside their means (unless you consider eating and having a home to be living outside your means). A second income adds money into the pool even after creche fees. Without that money, they would not be able to manage. It's nothing to do with not taking responsibility for their children's welfare and rearing, which to be blunt is a stupid thing to say.

Tombo2001

superleedsdub wrote: »

Fair enough, I stand corrected :-) Was that for childcare, perhaps it's a longer process for that?

Nope for a sports club - the bit that seemed just to take a while was once I'd completed it the documentation, confirmation coming back to the club that it was completed.

To be fair - maybe your experience is the norm; I'd just assumed it always took that long.

Utter Consternation

Boggles wrote: »

I'm going to take a stab in the dark here and suggest Stephen is single.

And a virgin.

superleedsdub

Tombo2001 wrote: »

Nope for a sports club - the bit that seemed just to take a while was once I'd completed it the documentation, confirmation coming back to the club that it was completed.

To be fair - maybe your experience is the norm; I'd just assumed it always took that long.

It would be interesting to know what the average times for applications are, I doubt the garda keep records for this and would be willing to share. I do recall being informed by the student hosting company that average time for them was 2 weeks and sure enough it was.

Tombo2001

DavyD_83 wrote: »

The show did seem very focused on creating outrage and fear at what may be happemng in your child's crèche.
That woman should clearly not be allowed operate a crèche, or work in any childcare related area based on what we saw.
Based on the evidence, this feels like it should have been a show about the inefficiencies and failures in the regulations that were supposedly implemented, with H&S used as an example of these failures.

There was surprisingly little focus on the negligence of Tusla, who identified all these issues on 2014 (and claim to have investigated the crèche every year since) but allow the crèche to continue to operate as is.
Also, RE: Garda vetting, I find it very odd that there was no comment, or statement regarding the average time it currently takes to get Garda vetting.
If it is quick and simple, surely they would have said "Garda vetting which can be completed in 24hrs/a week", but I suspect they didn't because it is itself another disorganised public system. I was involved in scouts in the past and getting Garda vetting completed was always red tape that caused unreasonable delays.

None of this is to defend Ann Davy in any way; if happily help her get to sleep any evening.
In fact, I'd suggest somebody calls to get house at bedtime every night to ensure she gets to sleep in the most caring way possible using her tried and tested method:
Face down, hand on middle of the back, face pushed onto mattress any time you try to move or object; I think that was the basics, I might have missed something. I'm sure she'd appreciate the caring assistance. (Would love a creative judge to prescribe this for a month as part of her sentence).

I just think that you could go into ANY organisation in the country, and you will find countless instances of regulations being breached.

HOWEVER - creches are an easy target because of the nature of what they do.

Again - apart from the 'minder to child' ratio piece -I really didn't see anything that warrants the media attention this is getting....and even that, was it for one day or one hour or an ongoing basis?

What am I missing here?

Film any creche in Ireland and you will get good quality footage of two year olds bawling their eyes out. it happens a lot at that age...…

I'd love to see RTE send their 'undercovers' into Facebook or Google - take on a big organisation like that and see how brave they are about 'uncovering' rule breaches.

klaaaz

LirW wrote: »

It's going to be a hard sell to people that pay full price in crèche to increase their taxes because even though they carry the country financially, they get no return. They still have to pay for every GP and A&E visit, if they aren't paying a big premium they have to use a vastly dysfunctional health care system, the roads are bad, public transport is an expensive joke, there is no proper cycling infrastructure, their insurances go up every year even though they played by the rules. The USC that was planned as a temporary emergency tax is still in place and wasn't it put up just recently? Sugar tax because some people aren't capable of looking after themselves, more carbon tax where the people commuting to work will pay the most for it.
3 billion for a national broadband plan where experts have doubt about the success of it.

The working Joe has to put the shilling out for all of it and gets very grim service in return. Plus pays a second mortgage for childcare. Good luck trying to sell that.

It's quite simple though, as I stated numerous times on this site Sweden has subsidised childcare for around 120 euro per month. Perhaps raising direct income tax by a couple of percent is condemned by many to pay for this yet the saving per year per child for the individual/couple is 10-12k. Simple maths but a bunch of right wing ignorant posters here want more money in their pocket to satisfy their personal greed rather than pay for excellent services for all. They call state subsidies for childcare that dirty word "socialism"

https://sweden.se/society/10-things-that-make-sweden-family-friendly/

You can send your child to preschool (förskola) for a maximum cost of SEK 1,425 per month, so many families choose to use their monthly child allowance to help offset this cost.

markodaly

iamwhoiam wrote: »

Cocoon creches have cameras in every room and parents can log in with a password to view it online . They can see the children and what is going on
The very fact that the cameras are there is a safeguard as the staff are aware of them

It may be reassuring for the parents, but is this actually legal and complies with GDPR?

LirW

Oh god, I just saw that the woman in question did the pick-up runs from my son's school when we lived in Dublin, I've seen her every day.
She really treated the kids like cattle and there was nothing remotely nice about that lady.

I remember that on some days she couldn't fit all the kids into the car so they either squeezed or she instructed the oldest kid of the group to keep the kids together until the next car comes for a few minutes and left.

Knowing that plenty of kids would come from the more run down areas of Ballymun and Finglas I wouldn't be surprised about a nasty local outrage.

Gatling

superleedsdub wrote: »

It would be interesting to know what the average times for applications are, I doubt the garda keep records for this and would be willing to share. I do recall being informed by the student hosting company that average time for them was 2 weeks and sure enough it was.

The average is 10 -14 days with the new Centralised National Vetting Bureau depending if the person supplies the correct information.

I've been vetted 3 times in 3 years working with kids .

Tusla definitely need looking at here ,there is no way this should have not been picked up during inspections

TheBoyConor

eviltwin wrote: »

Yeah, what's so strange about that?

The male carer in my sons after school service is imo the best on the team.

An awful lot of mothers wouldn't trust a male childcare worker for fear there would be abuse. It is a higher chance of abuse than a female childcare worker to be fair. And there is

SusieBlue

Its ironic that a lot of people here criticising mothers (not fathers though, fathers are fine) for working & using créche facilities are the exact same people on other threads bemoaning and judging those in receipt of social welfare and council houses.
You can't have it every way.

That documentary was heartbreaking, that woman should without a doubt be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But it isn't reflective of the vast majority of créches.

Instead of blaming women & feminism for "abandoning" their children, we should be demanding better quality and better value childcare options. Who on earth would pay the equivalent of a monthly mortgage payment for someone to mind their child, leaving only a few hundred euro left over from their salary, unless they absolutely have to?

Most parents are not emotionless robots who relish at the idea of leaving their child for 40 hours a week.
Anyone I know who does it, does it out of necessity. Not to have the latest iPhone or a two week stint in the Maldives, but to pay their car insurance. Or their electricity bill. Or to contribute towards their astronomical rent costs.

I actually can't believe that the majority are blaming the parents when the issue is with poor levels of inspection, poor implementation of regulations, and very little choices and options for families who have no choice but to have both or single parents working.

GreeBo

Boggles wrote: »

Yeah, that's what I said.

Clearly that was a typo, but I have corrected the original post for clarity.

Boggles wrote: »

I don't know if they do or they don't and I suspect neither do you.

But the point remains, if a facilities policy is to hand the child to you that does not 100% mean there is a problem.

If thats their policy then I would certainly question why they wouldnt let me see how they ran their creche "behind closed doors" and could only assume they were hiding something.

Can you give a reasonable explanation as to why a creche wouldn't allow you to see your child under care? Other than some ridiculous idea that parents are unvetted...:rolleyes:

Leg End Reject

Plopsu wrote: »

You really just don't live on the same planet as the rest of us, do you. Many people struggle to make ends meet. It's nothing to do with living outside their means (unless you consider eating and having a home to be living outside your means). A second income adds money into the pool even after creche fees. Without that money, they would not be able to manage. It's nothing to do with not taking responsibility for their children's welfare and rearing, which to be blunt is a stupid thing to say.

There's also the reality that we need to plan for private pensions so we have some quality of life when we're older. The state pension won't be as generous in a few years. You can't do that bouncing babies on your knee all day.

I look forward to this being quoted and a full paragraph rebuttal written for each line.

Neyite

Tombo2001 wrote: »

Anyone else find it a bit bizarre that RTE sent in an undercover team to investigate a single creche?

Is that not a bit OTT -

I must admit I didnt watch the show - but the brief snippets I saw coming out of it didnt show me anything I'd consider an outrageous breach.

Like - FFS - milk was diluted with water...... sorry but this is no big deal.

I have no doubt, moreover that once RTE pulls the trigger and decides to send in the 'undercovers' that they have to justify the expense and 'uncover' some scandal.....but I didnt particularly see it here.

Kids slept on bouncers? Is that all you've got, to warrant the level of national media attention this is getting?

In the meantime - creches will get more and more paranoid about the rules and costs go ever higher......

The Garda vetting thing - I get it. But in defence, these places can suffer death by bureacracy and garda vetting can take a long long long time to process.

Bouncers are not recommended for babies to sleep in due to their head flopping forwards and blocking their airways. This can cause death. As can sleeping on their tummies.

The fire escape was blocked with cots in a room where the ratio was should have been 1:3 yet it was 1:20 for at least an hour daily. In the event of a fire there is no escape nor would that one worker have time to get all of those children out. Shutters were also down on all the back windows blocking yet another exit in the event of an emergency.

Babies were being fed cheap noodles which are high in sodium which is not good for babies with no other accompanying vegetables. Watered down milk where children are supposed to get full fat milk.

She was rough and shrill and yelling at kids for being...well, kids.

Be honest, would you be happy to hand over 1200 to that woman knowing your baby is being held down and shouted at to the point he actually ducks when he sees her coming, because he knows what she's going to do to him. You ok with handing over all that money for that 'service'?

LirW

klaaaz wrote: »

It's quite simple though, as I stated numerous times on this site Sweden has subsidised childcare for around 120 euro per month. Perhaps raising direct income tax by a couple of percent is condemned by many to pay for this yet the saving per year per child for the individual/couple is 10-12k. Simple maths but a bunch of right wing ignorant posters here want more money in their pocket to satisfy their personal greed rather than pay for excellent services for all. They call state subsidies for childcare that dirty word "socialism"

https://sweden.se/society/10-things-that-make-sweden-family-friendly/

I mentioned before my first-born went through heavily subsidised childcare in a country with a quite similar tax expenditure to Ireland.
I'm all in favour of subsidising it but you'll be hard pressed selling it to parents that already pay high taxes and are promised many services that they're still waiting for.
I know this is a wider issue but if there would be a serious decluttering of pointless expenditure in governmental agencies I'm sure there would be money found to work something out.
Just look at the HSE alone for example, this is a financial blackhole.

While Scandinavian countries do indeed pay higher taxes, they also spend their money smarter and many aspects of life there are subsidised, be it education, healthcare access, public transport, rent, care.
While the personal tax rate in Ireland is high for the average earner they get next nothing remotely comparable to the above. We're talking about people here that spend up to 5k a year commuting to work on Public transport on one route while other central European countries issue train passes for all services for 1500 euros a year.

Wtf ?

Why does RTE have to go undercover ? It should be Tusla or another Govt agency Mystery Diner Style. There should be a state worker in every creche watching out for this sort of crap. As usual this will die down and F all will be done

pwurple

One eyed Jack wrote: »

That’s a choice parents make themselves, for themselves, and suggestions that they should aspire to what you think they should aspire to are precisely why some parents feel that’s what they have to aspire to, in spite of the potentially adverse consequences for their children, which is why we end up with programmes like the one tonight investigating dire standards of “care” in childcare facilities. The franchise shown on the programme tonight is only one of many substandard childcare facilities dotted up and down the country which are charging parents willing to pay it an arm and a leg to treat their children like shìte.


Aspirations? More like notions tbh.

I hope you are actively politically involved in rolling back Charlie McCreevys tax changes that removed the support for a parent to stay at home.

https://www.independent.ie/business/in-the-workplace/unfair-tax-change-achieved-goal-of-getting-women-back-to-work-36532611.html

Not notions, tax structure. Tax individualisation, introduced by Charlie McCreevy in 1999, penalises one-income married couples with children.


That's what happened.

In order to afford to stay at home full time, one person needs to earn effectively a wage for 2 people, OR have a very low or no mortgage, OR, earn nothing at all and survive on social welfare.

For the vast majority of normal cases, it doesn't work.


And also, this imaginary dreamland of some period in the past where some at home woman was the norm... Get out of the clouds. People always had childcare, it just wasn't formalised. Neighbours, grandparents, aunties and uncles, going to 'the farm' for the summer.

Most women also worked and have done since the dawn of time. It's only the 'idle rich' who didn't. It was just unpaid and unrecognised. On a farm, in the family shop, sewing, washing, cleaning fish, etc.

Boggles

GreeBo wrote: »

If thats their policy then I would certainly question why they wouldnt let me see how they ran their creche "behind closed doors" and could only assume they were hiding something.

Some of them have a thing called a window it was invented a while back.

GreeBo wrote: »

Other than some ridiculous idea that parents are unvetted...:rolleyes:

Parents are unvetted, what are you struggling with?

lawred2

pwurple wrote: »

I hope you are actively politically involved in rolling back Charlie McCreevys tax changes that removed the support for a parent to stay at home.

https://www.independent.ie/business/in-the-workplace/unfair-tax-change-achieved-goal-of-getting-women-back-to-work-36532611.html

Not notions, tax structure. Tax individualisation, introduced by Charlie McCreevy in 1999, penalises one-income married couples with children.


That's what happened.

In order to afford to stay at home full time, one person needs to earn effectively a wage for 2 people, OR have a very low or no mortgage, OR, earn nothing at all and survive on social welfare.

For the vast majority of normal cases, it doesn't work.


And also, this imaginary dreamland of some period in the past where some at home woman was the norm... Get out of the clouds. People always had childcare, it just wasn't formalised. Neighbours, grandparents, aunties and uncles, going to 'the farm' for the summer.

Most women also worked and have done since the dawn of time. It's only the 'idle rich' who didn't. It was just unpaid and unrecognised. On a farm, in the family shop, sewing, washing, cleaning fish, etc.

best off not engaging with it

klaaaz

LirW wrote: »

I mentioned before my first-born went through heavily subsidised childcare in a country with a quite similar tax expenditure to Ireland.
I'm all in favour of subsidising it but you'll be hard pressed selling it to parents that already pay high taxes and are promised many services that they're still waiting for.
I know this is a wider issue but if there would be a serious decluttering of pointless expenditure in governmental agencies I'm sure there would be money found to work something out.
Just look at the HSE alone for example, this is a financial blackhole.

While Scandinavian countries do indeed pay higher taxes, they also spend their money smarter and many aspects of life there are subsidised, be it education, healthcare access, public transport, rent, care.
While the personal tax rate in Ireland is high for the average earner they get next nothing remotely comparable to the above. We're talking about people here that spend up to 5k a year commuting to work on Public transport on one route while other central European countries issue train passes for all services for 1500 euros a year.

It's a viscous cycle. They only feel that they pay high taxes because they can't afford childcare/mortgage etc on their disposable income so they have hardly any cash left over. Up the direct income tax, subsidise the childcare(and other Scandi type services) at the same time and the same person will actually have more per month for disposable income as essential services will be subsidised. Massive savings in childcare alone supports this(as per Sweden example). But paying high taxes is "socialism" and the right wingers prefer personal greed over caring for everyone's needs.

nthclare

SusieBlue wrote: »

Its ironic that a lot of people here criticising mothers (not fathers though, fathers are fine) for working & using créche facilities are the exact same people on other threads bemoaning and judging those in receipt of social welfare and council houses.
You can't have it every way.

That documentary was heartbreaking, that woman should without a doubt be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But it isn't reflective of the vast majority of créches.

Instead of blaming women & feminism for "abandoning" their children, we should be demanding better quality and better value childcare options. Who on earth would pay the equivalent of a monthly mortgage payment for someone to mind their child, leaving only a few hundred euro left over from their salary, unless they absolutely have to?

Most parents are not emotionless robots who relish at the idea of leaving their child for 40 hours a week.
Anyone I know who does it, does it out of necessity. Not to have the latest iPhone or a two week stint in the Maldives, but to pay their car insurance. Or their electricity bill. Or to contribute towards their astronomical rent costs.

I actually can't believe that the majority are blaming the parents when the issue is with poor levels of inspection, poor implementation of regulations, and very little choices and options for families who have no choice but to have both or single parents working.

Not understanding your post, you've a lot of valid points.

Usually parents invested in their kids welfare have an inbuilt sense of danger and second sense of how the kid's are blending into a cresche and it's environment.

It's up to the parents to have an ability to find a suitable place for their kid's unfortunately there's a lot of covert narcissistic people who take on rolls of positions which are the easy way out...
Like I said earlier there's a lot of misfits attracted to working as carer's in general and I wouldn't trust them with looking after a potted plants never mind a person.

A lot of people in rehab or with addictions seem to steer towards being social workers and carer's as Social Care and sociology is an easy degree for people to gain employment in.
Some only some of these graduates are absolutely bonkers and don't give a toss....

markodaly

fly_agaric wrote: »

Irish people don't want to pay any more tax (everyone wants to pay less...and expects better services), don't trust the state to run anything and seem to like the idea of these private or quasi-private market based systems with fake competition or more money and cuteness of the "consumer" supposedly buying a better service. edit: As a result, collectively we have to own these "market failures".

Sums it up to be honest.

We go mad when we see something on the TV like we did last night, look for people to scapegoat and to blame, but really like most problems in Ireland its with the electorate and society in general.

Let's be honest, does anyone really think we should throw more money at Tusla? What are they doing with the annual €750 million at the moment?

Private operators step in because they have to. There is no state organised care for the 0-5 group. There probably should be.
The people working in these places are paid and treated like crap. People with degrees earning barely above minimum wage?
Yet, we give child allowance to everyone.

Will parents forgo their child allowance to invest in professional childcare services? Lots of hard questions to be asked and answered.

Plopsu

Leg End Reject wrote: »

I look forward to this being quoted and a full paragraph rebuttal written for each line.

I'm assuming that was directed at One-Eyed Jack

LirW

klaaaz wrote: »

It's a viscous cycle. They only feel that they pay high taxes because they can't afford childcare/mortgage etc on their disposable income so they have hardly any cash left over. Up the direct income tax, subsidise the childcare(and other Scandi type services) at the same time and the same person will actually have more per month for disposable income as essential services will be subsidised. Massive savings in childcare alone supports this(as per Sweden example). But paying high taxes is "socialism" and the right wingers prefer personal greed over caring for everyone's needs.

I know what you mean with the whole socialism thing.
I was more talking that this could be seen as a political stunt like many others that were never delivered in the end. Scandis know that it mostly works and that's why they're behind it.
I can't blame people here for having no faith that there will be a service delivered.

But again this is a wider issue that involves all public services that are in bad shape. Realistically the clean-up needs to start on a more fundamental base than just jumping in with childcare.
I'd have no problem with a Scandinavian style system where I don't pay for a GP visit and have easy access to consultants, public transport is so good that there is no need for me to run a car and the rest is covered by a decent infrastructure for bicycles, childcare is heavily subsidised, so are third level courses and schemes to reskill, there would be a cheap third party car insurance policy for everyone by the state.

SusieBlue

nthclare wrote: »

Not understanding your post, you've a lot of valid points.

Usually parents invested in their kids welfare have an inbuilt sense of danger and second sense of how the kid's are blending into a cresche and it's environment.

It's up to the parents to have an ability to find a suitable place for their kid's unfortunately there's a lot of covert narcissistic people who take on rolls of positions which are the easy way out...
Like I said earlier there's a lot of misfits attracted to working as carer's in general and I wouldn't trust them with looking after a potted plants never mind a person.

A lot of people in rehab or with addictions seem to steer towards being social workers and carer's as Social Care and sociology is an easy degree for people to gain employment in.
Some only some of these graduates are absolutely bonkers and don't give a toss....

99.9% of parents have their childrens best interests at heart and wouldn't knowingly put their children into the care of someone they know to be abusive and hostile.

If the facility is openly lying to parents, cutting corners in regards to diet and safety and Túsla isn't inspecting them, how are the parents to know there is an issue?
Particularly with young babies who can't talk & communicate to the parents what's going on?

You are still blaming the parents. The responsibility is solely on the childcare providers to ensure they are meeting the children's needs, and on Túsla to ensure standards are being upheld.

Also completely disagree with your comments about social care degrees/workers but thats a topic for another thread.

Abba987

Tombo2001 wrote: »

Anyone else find it a bit bizarre that RTE sent in an undercover team to investigate a single creche?

Is that not a bit OTT -

I must admit I didnt watch the show - but the brief snippets I saw coming out of it didnt show me anything I'd consider an outrageous breach.

Like - FFS - milk was diluted with water...... sorry but this is no big deal.

I have no doubt, moreover that once RTE pulls the trigger and decides to send in the 'undercovers' that they have to justify the expense and 'uncover' some scandal.....but I didnt particularly see it here.

Kids slept on bouncers? Is that all you've got, to warrant the level of national media attention this is getting?

In the meantime - creches will get more and more paranoid about the rules and costs go ever higher......

The Garda vetting thing - I get it. But in defence, these places can suffer death by bureacracy and garda vetting can take a long long long time to process.

Watch part 3.