Shocked Edinburgh parents have been left to look elsewhere for childcare after a nursery was forced to close some of its rooms.
With just two and a half weeks' notice, Clare Hammond, 34, said she felt her 'blood run cold' when she was informed that Thrive Childcare's Corner House Nursery in Spylaw had to close their rooms temporarily to under threes due to "staff shortages".
While her three-year-old son, Cian, is happily still at the nursery, Clare rushed to find new childcare for 18-month Mairéad.
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Corner House is run by Thrive Childcare who said they had to close three of their rooms temporarily while potential staff go through the recruitment process.
Speaking to Edinburgh Live, Clare, a strategic planning advisor said: "I have two children, Cian is three and a half and Mairéad is one and a half, and both of them are at Corner House Spylaw. They have four rooms, and they will close three of them at the start of May. We only found out last Wednesday (April 12).
"Now anyone under three won't be able to attend from next month. There was about 30 kids. I'm from New Zealand so we have no family near by. Your blood runs cold when you get something like that, when you know you won't have childcare.
"Of course, nursery waitlist are very long in Edinburgh. A number of of parents had their kids on waitlists for over a year and are only starting to hear back now for a start date in August.
"Mairéad took ages to settle into nursery too, she was quite young because I had to go back to work for financial reasons. Now she had grown some really strong connections with some of the staff, to the point that she runs up to them as soon as we're in the door.
"Lucky one of the agency staff is going to her new nursery now."
She stressed that it wasn't just Corner House that are feeling the pressure and other private nurseries have sadly had to close, limit classes or raise their fees.
"There doesn't seem to be any childminders left in Edinburgh and the only other option is nannying - but that's about £15 an hour. Most nurseries in Bruntsfield work out at around £4 to £5 an hour per child, so you would need three children to make the cost worth it.
Clare continued: "You can get 1,140 hours of funded early learning and childcare a year for 30 hours, but only from the age of three. State nurseries usually close at 3pm, but that won't work for a lot of parents who work later - most parents can't afford to work until 3pm or find childcare over the school holidays.
"We were lucky that we were able to get our daughter another placement in another nursery quite quickly, but there are still a number parents who haven't been able to get any childcare at all.
"Some would have it lined up for August, but that creates another issue. We're already seeing around Edinburgh that women are unemployed or underemployed, not doing the number of hours they want to do, because of childcare and this statistically does fall on women."
This comes as Scotland’s Gender Equality Index published in 2020 found that 85 per cent of people aged 16-64 who were “economically inactive” due to caring for children were women.
A spokesperson for Corner House Nursery Spylaw said: “We are sorry we have had to take the extremely difficult decision to temporarily close our baby and toddler rooms from May 1.
“Along with many day nurseries across Scotland and the UK, we have faced significant challenges in recruiting and retaining qualified nursery staff. Our current staffing situation means we cannot continue to provide the safe and high-quality care and education that our parents rightly expect across the whole nursery.
“Led by our long-standing manager, we will continue to operate our pre-school (aged 3-5 years) room to avoid disruption to the children who will start school later this year.
“We are doing everything we can to recruit and train new staff and currently have applicants going through external security checks to enable us to re-establish a full and stable team and re-open the other rooms as soon as possible.
“We have been meeting with parents and supporting them to find alternative nursery provision, either at our other Corner House nurseries in Edinburgh, Gillsland and The Grange, or with other local providers.”
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