Just Childcare

Dylan
1 Star
The Village Day nursery has really struggled since Just Childcare took over with nearly all of the staff leaving over a 6 month period. They are now struggling to retain new staff. It's been very difficult to sort bills with poor communication making it harder. All Google reviews for Just Childcare are 1*, except for 3 x 5* star reviews (2 x employees of Just Childcare and one related to a director!).
Thursday 23rd June 2022

Danni Peek
1 Star
Just Childcare acquired the nursery that both my children have been at since they were babies. My eldest has already left, but my youngest had a year left. We were told nothing would change, but from our perspective EVERYTHING has changed. We’ve now pulled our child from the nursery as it’s so horrifically bad. Almost every member of original staff has left, due to Just childcare’s incompetence as a company. If you want to keep wonderful staff, you have to treat them well, this was certainly not the case. Also, blaming the previous owner for your own incompetence as a company is outrageous.
Wednesday 3rd November 2021

Maggie Carson
1 Star
No end of headaches since sending my children to one of their nurseries. They seem incapable of calculating a correct bill and only seem to understand where they have gone wrong after it has been painstakingly spelled out to them. Icing on the cake today was being refused childcare which was needed as a result of a bad fall and ligament damage to my ankle. Apparently this was refused due to arrears on the account. These arrears were due to yet another miscalculation and have since been removed. However, even though we are now not in arrears I apparently can't book further days until payment in received in the next two days. Finally customer service in finance is none existent and frankly rude at times. I would like to add however that the staff and the manager of the nursery have been awesome and try as far as possible to buffer this pressure and irritation.
Tuesday 25th September 2018

Louise Robinson
1 Star
Please do not send your children to any nursery of this company, money orientated, head office are cold and not helpful. How they continue to operate on limited staff and agency workers is unbelievable I believe when inspections are in place then suddenly they cover up. I was so concerned about my child and the staff employed who were scared.
Wednesday 22nd April 2020

Aaron Scully
1 Star
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.
Sunday 18th November 2018