Genevieve Meehan, nine months old, tragically died at Tiny Toes Nursery in Stockport, with the deputy manager jailed for manslaughter and new data shows the shocking number of serious childcare incidents
A mum has told of how her baby girl “felt so far away” when she was told her daughter had gone “limp and blue” at a nursery.
Genevieve Meehan, nine months old, tragically died at Tiny Toes Nursery in Stockport in May, 2022, and deputy manager Kate Roughley was jailed for 14 years for her manslaughter. Roughley had strapped the baby girl’s face down on a bean bag for more than 90 minutes on May 9 2022.
And as Genevieve’s parents recalled the horrific experience, worrying new data has revealed the sheer number of serious childcare incidents that are taking place at nurseries around the country.
There have been almost 20,000 “significant events” in the past five years at nurseries in England which is on average about 75 a week, which have been reported to Ofsted, the BBC found.
And the latest figures for 2023-24 show a 40% increase on the figure from five years previously, which can only be partly explained by more efforts to ensure that cases are reported.
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While Katie Wheeler and John Meehan, have said that the figures are “horrifying” and they want to see stiffer safeguarding measures. Their daughter Genevieve died from asphyxiation at the Tiny Toes Nursery in Stockport and Ms Wheeler recalled going to the hospital to see her.
“The woman on the phone said to me that they’d gone to wake Genevieve up from her sleep and she was limp and blue. And you think in those moments, that’s my little girl, and she felt so far away,” she told the BBC.
“I got to the hospital and there she was, a tiny little person. She was surrounded by so many doctors and I felt absolutely desperate. They asked us to go into a side room, and I knew then what they were going to say.”
Ms Wheeler described the moment doctors said they had been trying for 40 minutes to revive her and there was “nothing more” they could do. “You’re holding her and just willing for it to be different. I couldn’t understand how a baby of Genevieve’s age could go to sleep for a nap in the afternoon and then not wake up,” she said.
Nurseries reported over 4,200 serious childcare incidents in 2023-24, compared with 3,021 in 2019-20, according to figures from Ofsted, who say these reports were assessed as urgent. These incidents can be anything from injuries to fires or floods on the premises.
Nurseries are given broad criteria and encouraged to report which means that an investigation may later find that no breach had occurred. But at the same time childcare experts have called the situation extremely worrying and there are calls for inspectors to check CCTV.
“Standards [of care] are so low that the government surely has an obligation to improve them,” reportedly said Helen Penn, professor of early childhood from the University of East London.
The BBC said that CCTV footage of what happened in Genevieve’s tragic case is too distressing to be broadcast but showed Roughley strapping her face down on a beanbag.
DCI Charlotte Whalley said: “She got a blanket and threw it over the bean bag and then dumped Genevieve on her front on the bean bag – that’s the only word I can use really it was just this ‘boof’.”
She continued: “She doesn’t get found for approximately 45 minutes after that, when Kate finds her, goes to wake her up, you know from watching the body language of Kate that something is wrong. She flips Genevieve on to her side and then runs out the room.”
Genevieve’s dad said how Roughley had become “increasingly exasperated” with his daughter and used words for her including “vile”.
Greater Manchester Police said CCTV footage at the nursery showed Roughley “verbally abusing and mishandling the children, pushing a child’s head down, roughly placing a child on the floor, and threatening to kick a child in the head.”
It continued: “On one occasion, she swaddled a child so tightly that he couldn’t move. Seeing the child was visibly distressed, she forced his head down, preventing him from moving. On another occasion, she swaddled a child tightly, telling him to ‘f***ing go home’”.
It continued: “From the CCTV footage on Tuesday 26 April 2022, it was evident that Rebecca Gregory’s interactions with the children were callous and lacked proper care and compassion. She failed to adhere to the correct, safe, and expected requirements and responsibility that comes with caring for young children.”
