PARENTS of children at a York nursery have spoken out in the wake of a highly critical Ofsted report.

Two parents contacted The Press to say Kaleidoscope nursery at Acomb had their full support, with one saying: “I have complete faith and trust in the staff.”

But another parent got in touch to say she had withdrawn her son from the nursery just days before Ofsted’s inspection in October, after he had suffered a friction burn on his neck.

The Press reported last week how Ofsted had concluded the nursery was “inadequate,” saying it did not have robust systems firmly in place to keep children safe and effectively safeguarded, and revealing that a delivery person was allowed unsupervised access for a short period of time to an area near unsupervised children.

Emma Atkinson subsequently said her daughter had attended the nursery for the past three years and would continue to do so.

“I understand that issues have been raised regarding the access to the nursery but I would just like to state that I have complete faith and trust in the staff at this nursery and would just like to express my support for them,” she said.

“I have never been made to feel like my daughter’s safety or welfare has been compromised. In fact they are amazing with my daughter. She is partially deaf and wears a hearing aid and they have always gone above and beyond for both of us.”

Dave Crosby said his three-year-old had been going to the nursery for two years. “At no time have we had any reason to question her safety or well being,” he said. “Her development has also been magnificent, her social skills and vocabulary have all been developed tremendously during her time with Kaleidoscope.”

But Julie Maddison said she and her husband David felt the Ofsted criticisms had been justified in the light of her son Thomas’s experiences.

She said she felt staff had been blasé after he had suffered a friction burn on the back of his neck when he had been playing with some laces, and she had subsequently withdrawn him.

She said she had complained and Kaleidoscope’s operations manager, Alison Turner, had replied saying she fully appreciated her concerns and had therefore undertaken a thorough investigation of the incident.

“The mark was caused when Thomas was playing with the maths threading laces when he rubbed it across the back of his neck,” she said, adding it was clear there had been a ‘communication issue’ on the nursery’s part and apologising for distress that may have been caused.