RTE Primetime Investigation into creches


+1. Think of the eye-watering salaries enjoyed by our (un)esteemed bankers and politicians, for example.
I did not watch the programme, I chose not to. I do hope that it leads to an overhaul of current standards. I saw Frances Fitzgerald on Prime Time tonight. Uninspiring, IMHO. Cannot help thinking it will simply lead to committees, reports etc, while children suffer, and greedy crèche owners profit.
 

I totally agree. She came across as someone simply sticking to a script, there was no sense coming across that she was going to be proactive or kick any a*ses. That, on top of being 'otherwise engaged' for the discussion immediately following the programme and not sending a representative, have done her no favours. She's just not coming across as a strong Minister at all.
 
I almost expected her to say 'someone should do something about it'...
 
My one question with the current media coverage and political "solution" to this is just how does a FETAC Course prevent someone from being unsuitable to look after kids? Training isn't the root behind what we saw, so insistence on better training is a complete moot point. No certificate would have made those individuals suitable to be around children unsupervised.

From what I could gather from the show, those incidents happened when there wasn't a manager around (at other location, etc), though that wasn't entirely clear so I could be mistaken. The move should be that there is always supervision of the staff, not that staff have to have a certificate.
 
I don't think the programme just uncovered one type of fault, though.

I agree that lack of supervision and management was a fundamental flaw and needs to be urgently addressed. But I also think the programme showed that some childcare workers simply didn't have a clue and thought they could reason with an 18 month old baby, put a toddler in a room on their own as a punishment etc. This is also something that needs tackling and some of the staff involved, with proper training and adequate supervision, would probably be capable of working in a creche. Some of them probably chose that type of work because they 'loved children' and were then completely overwhelmed when they realised that working fulltime with dozens of toddlers is not remotely like minding the baby down the road for a couple of hours now and then.

And definitely some of the staff shown are temperamentally unsuited to working with small children and should never have been employed by a creche in the first place.
 
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