‘Young children should be at home’

IT’S a weekday morning at the nursery where I’ve worked as an assistant for several years – and it’s chaos.

Our premises, in a leafy suburb of London, accommodates more than 50 children under the age of five, but a great many of those in our care have only just turned two.

That means they are still in nappies, cannot feed themselves, and in some instances still resort to crawling as they’re unsteady on their feet. It’s not unusual for them to cry endlessly for their mothers.

At any one time there’s between eight and 12 dedicated nursery nurses, but there are still simply not enough hands between us to give the one-to-one care that many children need.

That’s why my heart sank when, last year, the Government unveiled an expansion of the free childcare package, which currently offers eligible parents 30 hours a week for three- and four-year-olds. From September 2025 that will extend to children aged between nine months and four years.

On paper, this is doubtless music to the ears of working parents, despite the warning from critics that a staffing crisis and long-term underfunding mean the provision will be impossible to roll out in any meaningful way.

Alas, as someone who has long witnessed the reality of what it means to place your children in nursery care day in, day out, I’m afraid I see it differently.

This policy is a disaster – and not because of staffing levels. For the truth is, whatever the rhetoric, there is really only one place a very young child should be looked after. That is at home, with a family member.

This is a highly unfashionable thing to say out loud these days, but I’m afraid it’s true.

I understand this is not feasible for many and I have every sympathy for working parents trying to make ends meet. But – unpalatable though it may be – many choose to go to work because raising children is hard – and this Government policy is encouraging them to do so.

Many are reassured in their decision by those marketing the scheme as ‘early learning’ provision. This is a fallacy. We nursery workers simply don’t have time to teach – we are too busy changing nappies or making sure children are not choking on their food.

While many parents may be eagerly waiting to ship their little ones off to nursery, it is doing our children no good at all.