BestStart Fendalton

"“… Unfortunately after investigating each accident, we found there was nothing the teachers could have done to prevent them from happening. The children were being well supervised in small groups and our equipment is safe and compliant…” If you did so well, then why did our daughter suffer such a serious accident breaking her femur, one of the strongest bones in the body, needing surgery and over a month rest? How can you possible trust your kid at a centre that say there is nothing to do to prevent a toddler from falling from high equipment? If its unpreventable then why even bother to supervise kids who are in high spaces? Our daughter wasn’t just running or jumping around. She was doing something high risk which requires close supervision, and this supervision help avoid accidents. I am not saying our daughter’s accident SHOULD have been prevented no matter what (even us parents miss things, get distracted, make honest mistakes, don’t know all the risks of equipment etc. and accidents happen) I’m saying it COULD have been prevented. The lack of self-awareness of this daycare is really amazing. How can you improve safety and reduce serious injuries if you don’t even acknowledge what could have been done better? This centre even shared investigation results and how greatly they dealt with everything with other parents BEFORE informing us. They didn’t even wait to meet us and listen to our concerns before posting a sensitive matter related to our daughter’s health and safety. We had to hear about it through another parent (yes, we know about the post and we know you excluded us from it). I understand you need to reassure enrolled parents but please show some common sense, empathy and compassion towards the affected parents. Poor handling of centre management made a bad experience even worse. PS : sincere thank you to all teachers who took real good care of our daughter (nursery Lilly (not reliever), Caitie, Jess, Jenna etc). I really wish things hadn’t been this way."

"A lovely, caring and cosy daycare centre. My son has been in the nursery for nearly 6 months and has settled in so we'll due to the care, compassion and enthusiasm of the fantastic teachers."

"I am leaving more than one star because there are really good teachers in this daycare and we were really grateful for the care and love our daughter received from many. For parents who are looking at nurseries, I would recommend this centre as we never doubted about how happy, safe and well cared our daughter was during her first year. For parents who are looking at pre-schools, please make sure to ask all the important questions : how many full time teachers and for how long have they been there? What is the staff rotation? How do they manage relievers? What is the qualification of the relievers? What is the accident/injury history and what have they done to mitigate risks? Please make sure to have a look at the centre in busy hours and see how you and your kid feel in the environment. Please have a look at all the equipment and make sure you feel comfortable with your kid playing there. Sadly, our 33 month old daughter had an injury while climbing a wall. She fell and broke her left thigh bone needing surgery followed by 4-6 weeks rest. This happened even under the supervision of a reliever teacher who witnessed the fall. We know accidents happen and maybe what happened to her was just bad luck. But at the same time we keep on wondering whether there were things that could have been done to prevent this and/or make it a less serious injury regardless of whether the centre followed the minimum requirements by law. We might have protected her from this if we had addressed those questions when transitioning to pre-school instead of assuming that we would get the same satisfaction as in nursery. We definitely shouldn’t have ignored red flags such as high staff turnover, many different relievers coming and going, teachers always busy in a hectic environment, our daughter telling us ‘there is no space’. As parents, we expect the daycare to provide more than just the minimum required by law. We expect genuine care, and genuine concern for the well being of our little ones regardless of what is written in a manual. Based on our experience, this daycare has failed to do so. We dropped off a healthy kid and we picked up a kid with a broken leg 3 hours after the accident, sitting by herself in the middle of the class probably hurting and not knowing what was going on and not being able to express what she felt. We don’t really question whether the centre followed the regulations or not (probably they did as they had another big accident only weeks prior to this one), but we do question whether they genuinely looked after our daughter as to prevent this accident from happening as much as possible. We believe she was happy here but unfortunately, her being happy didn’t mean she was safe. We have decided to withdraw her from this daycare and we are totally gutted by our decision because our daughter spent over two thirds of her life in this centre and made strong bonds and relationships. However we don’t feel like this pre-school provides a safe environment to her anymore. We wish Best Start Fendalton will address our concerns to avoid another parent from going through the pain we had to go through."

"Preschool told me my son turned around and tripped over by a bike. I took him to GP. Split whole lip (now has a scar), duck egg sized bump on forehead, seriously bruised nose. Very wobbly two front teeth that specialist dentist said very likely killed nerves. My son told me (also two other witnesses) ***(a boy) rode a paddle bike and run him over so he fell off. According to GP and dentist:” there is no way your son would fell off himself and injured so seriously”. Communicated with center manager. She denied my son was hit by a bike but admitted there was a boy on the bike. However, she still insisted my son tripped over by the bike himself also no one needed to apologize to my son! So my 4.5 years old who has amazing hand and eye coordination( intermediate skier, the youngest BMX racer in local club, level 4 swimmer), didn’t see the boy and the bike just tripped himself over? The 3.5 years old boy sit still on the bike not moving? No apologies so far. The center didn’t tell me the truth, and my son left with a permanent bump on forehead, big scar on lip and nerve damaged two front teeth. All my son’s friends left this center after this accident happened as we all lost trust in this center with our own reasons. I have to stand up and tell the truth."