Teesside nursery calls for tighter regulations on out of school clubs
Many charities and organisations are reviewing safety policies
A Teesside nursery says the early years industry is calling for tighter regulations on out of school clubs because they're not strict enough.
Many charities and organisations are reviewing their safety policies, a week on since the Southport stabbings.
Nicci Knight, operations director at Zizus Day Care in Linthorpe near Middlesbrough, said: "We review our security every single trip out. We do a dynamic risk assessment when we're there. All the staff are fully trained on our personal emergency procedures as well, and following the attack last week, we actually sent out a memo to all of our staff reminding them of what our nursery procedure is and what we would do in case of a lockdown.
"Just to refresh in their minds that every knows what to do, no-one's going to be panicking and just to try and reiterate and calm people's nerves because it's going to be a scary situation. It's something you think would never happen and yet it has.
"The worst thing that happened was the misinformation online, so we first heard that a nursery school was in lockdown and we believed that you know nursery-aged children had been attacked, and for us, that's even worse because we can then imagine ourselves in that situation. As it transpired, it was older children that had been attacked and again, that's something we offer and it could be us.
"For a long time the early years industry has called for tighter regulations on out of school clubs because they're not regulated strictly enough with the people who run, the people work there, and the rules and regulations that they have and the policies in place aren't strong enough in some places, to protect the children that they're meant to be looking after.
"We have a great relationship with all of our parents. They really appreciate us taking out their children to the trips that we do and giving them the life experiences that we do, and they trust us to be able to do that and that's a huge honour. We'll never break the trust of the parents."