Parents and carers working at Croydon’s Mayday Hospital face an anxious few weeks, as many are being forced to seek new day care provision for their pre-school children after it was announced that the on-site nursery is to close on September 22.
Time out: a popular nursery in Thornton Heath is to close next month
In an email to clients, Co-operative Childcare group, which runs the nursery, said it had been a “difficult decision” and that it was closing its Croydon nursery branch because it had been “loss-making for some time”.
The decision comes with an increasing demand from hard-working parents for places at good nursery schools, at the same time that Croydon Council is “consulting” (ie. going through the motions before doing what they’ve already decided they are going to do) over possible closures and mergers of the borough’s five nurseries.
The Co-operative Childcare nursery on the hospital site in Thornton Heath comprises four separate rooms for babies to three- and four-year-olds, as well as some outdoor space, operating for up to 12 hours daily. They cater for up to 35 children.
The nursery employs around two dozen trained staff, and charges range from £311 weekly to £72 daily.
The nursery was the subject of a formal complaint last November, which Ofsted says was addressed satisfactorily by the nursery.
The nursery is used by NHS staff who need “safe and reliable childcare” while they work at the hospital.
Parents confronted with the prospect of finding alternative provision in less than four weeks have been reported as saying that the closure has “thrown everything into turmoil”.
A Croydon Health Services spokesperson said that the nursery is operated separately from the Trust, but that, “We are focusing our efforts on actively looking at ways to support our staff during this change.”
According to the nursery operators, The Midcounties Co-operative, “Unfortunately, the Croydon nursery has been loss-making for some time, which has been exacerbated by rising operational costs, and needs significant investment to modernise the facilities.”
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Does anyone know if Co-operative Childcare Group is a profit making organisation? If it is the question to ask is whether they are removing this provision because they don’t want to invest the money in bringing this facility up to standard. The key words are ‘significant investment’.
I wonder if the NHS would bring the provision in-house and employ the ‘2 dozen’ employees directly. It shares a site with the hospital and it sounds as if lots of hospital staff use it.
This is clearly a difficult time for the parents who use this facility, but spare a thought for the staff who work there as well.
Damn those unprofitable children.