Rebecca's Rascals Family Day Care

Initially our experience with Happy Hearts Reid street began positive our daughter had been here for 22mths she was very shy but made bonds with her educators and peers turnover was low. Recent experience is opposite to this. When new “management” started in January of this year we had started to notice a shift in the centre regular staff slowly disappearing and new faces appearing (no explanation as to staff movements) they weren’t directly involved in our daughter’s care but would be there on pick up and drop offs. When new management began our payment issues started(3 draws in one week even with management aware and apparently “fixed it”. In April there was a huge shift due to an incident in which 6 people left/ were let go, 3 weeks post this incident 13 staff total had left/resigned/or intended to resign this was extremely concerning for us and is in no way normal for any workplace particularly a small one. Due to management mishandling and extremely poor communication of this event/ the aftermath we decided to look elsewhere. Promises were broken our trust and confidence in management was non existent. We received no update as to how our daughter was coming and her future care plans. All the educators involved in our daughter care in the senior Toddler room had left. The effect this has had on our daughter was evident to us this affected her deeply and her communication to the educators had lapsed. In the weeks following the educators leaving we were told a generic “she had a beautiful day” but this definitely wasn’t the case she was coming home to us angry and upset . On almost every pick up in the 3 weeks post she had a wet/full nappy with on one occasion it was fully soaked though when my husband picked her up off the floor he was told by the educator on that “I noticed it was getting full we were just about to change her”. This showed us her distrust in her surrounds as she hates having a full nappy. Her water bottle was almost always completely dry/empty during this time and on these occasions on the way home she would consume almost a whole bottle of water. Comparably we have been at a new daycare in the area now for 2 weeks although this change was hard for our daughter(sad she wouldn’t be seeing her friends ) we had been getting a happier child back and she doesn’t have an intense thirst or wet nappy anymore. Communication from management was extremely poor. An example of poor their poor communication would be the way they communicated the incident in which 6 staff members were let go. On the Thursday we received a notification that they had “undergone an investigation, and as a result, some difficult decisions have been made to ensure the ongoing safety and wellbeing of all children in our care.” They then blocked the comments so we were unable to get any further information to query weather or not our child was in immediate danger to make a long story short they left us hanging for 4 days not knowing if our children were safe. We sent a private message which wasn’t answered during this time were promised better communication but Quality and effective communication hasn’t improved yes there is more of it but isn’t effective or purposeful communication. As a direct result of management’s actions post this/ leading up to along with the declining care for our daughter we left the centre (we don’t blame the educators specifically but with so many people gone they were clearly understaffed and overstretched). They did reach out for feedback directly to management but we had/have little to no confidence that it would make a difference. If you have made it this far in the review maybe you have had a tour? Yes it’s is a nice looking facility it has lots of things included it is the most expensive around but they have some serious problems/issues. Do yourself and child a favour and look elsewhere ask the local community group on their current recommendations first do research check the NQS and compare.