by It was a place where parents trusted the staff in the lives of their precious children. To keep them safe, take care of them and take care of them.
But on May 9, 2022, in the leafy suburb of Cheadle Hulme, the Tiny Toes nursery, with portraits of happy smiling children on the outside, became the scene of an unimaginable tragedy.
Parents who paid hundreds of pounds a week in fees now know the nursery’s funny image was ‘just the beginning’. In reality, this was a place where some children were threatened, manhandled and put in danger.
The first sign that something was seriously wrong came with an afternoon phone call. John Meehan was on the school trip when he was told the worst news. He was told that his baby daughter, Genevieve, had been found unresponsive and blue – and that an ambulance was on its way to the nursery.
READ MORE “It could have been our son who died… I feel guilty for being unlucky not to”
Now, almost two and a half years later, the full story of what Tiny Toes was up to can be told. After a series of court hearings, with the latest conclusion this week, two workers – a nursery nurse and the centre’s former deputy manager – are serving time behind bars for treating the innocent children who were rely on them.
But those sentences will not bring back nine-month-old Genevieve Zofia Meehan, who died of asphyxia and ‘pathophysiological stress’ at the hands of deputy manager Kate Roughley, who was jailed in May. And they do not erase the trauma suffered by her parents, or the parents of the other four children who were subjected to ‘rough and aggressive’ treatment and placed in ‘dangerous’ sleeping positions by nursery teacher Rebecca Gregory, who was jailed this week.
The four children who survived the neglect were abused at Tiny Toes on April 26, 2022 – about two weeks before Genevieve died. But it was when the police investigated the death of little ‘Gigi’ that the other offenses were discovered – revealing what was really going on behind closed doors.
Kate Roughley, in her role as ‘head of the children’s room’, had teased Genevieve before laying her face down on a beanbag, strapping her down with a harness and leaving her for an hour and a half. She was jailed for 14 years in May this year after being convicted of Genevieve’s manslaughter due to ill-treatment.
Subsequent investigations and trawling through CCTV footage led officers to the door of nursery nurse Rebecca Gregory, who was also stationed in the children’s room.
Her position was to ‘care for the youngest and most vulnerable children in the nursery,’ Minshull Street Crown Court heard on Monday.
But, one day in April 2022, she had hugged four young children, all aged between nine and twelve months at the time, putting one child down on his face while holding a dummy in his mouth , before she covered her face with a blanket and threatened to kick another person as he called out.
The prosecution in the case said she ‘mistreated’ four infants, three boys and one girl, with CCTV showing her being ‘rough and aggressive’ and putting them in ‘dangerous’ places to sleep.
Swaying babies and making them lie down, covering their faces with a blanket, was described in court as a ‘dangerous practice’ which could cause an ‘increased risk of suffocation, overheating and sudden infant death syndrome.’
The mother of one boy, who was told by Gregory to ‘shut up’ before his head hit the floor and was ‘thrown’ down on a blanket to be sworn in – and then sworn in before falling on his face – in one victim impact statement ‘she couldn’t believe’ what was going on at the day centre.
Prosecuting, Mr Tom Challinor said: “She [his mum] said that it has an emotional impact on the family and that it interferes with taking her son out of nursery school.
“She felt the nursery had started it. She couldn’t believe this was happening. She felt guilty for being lucky it wasn’t her son who died – but she recognizes it could have been. “
Gregory was also ‘in danger of knocking out’ another little girl who had swaddled her and put her face down on a mat, with her head covered with a blanket. She swallowed another and placed it the same way, face down, with a dummy in her mouth.
On 14 November 2023, Gregory was arrested at her home. When the evidence was presented in her interview, she admitted that she had taken action against the children, claiming that the nursery was understaffed.
Miss Milena Bennett, defending, said Gregory’s behavior was ‘out of character’ and claimed the nursery worker complained about staffing levels but was ‘knocked back’.
Gregory pleaded guilty to four counts of willful assault, abuse, neglect, abandonment or exposure of a child in a manner likely to cause unnecessary suffering and was jailed for three years.
Sentencing her, Judge Tina Landale told her: “It’s clear you weren’t looking after these children. You showed a persistent course of behavior when you didn’t think you were looking. These children were particularly vulnerable because they were unable to express their distress.”
Ms Roughley made similar claims about staff shortages following Genevieve’s death. During Roughley’s trial, prosecutors asked Megan Goldsby, an early years practitioner, to summarize her impressions of how the facility was operating.
“Not great,” she told jurors. “It was run very badly. We had too many children.”
Jurors also heard evidence from Catherine Knowles, an independent children’s social work consultant, who said the floor space available was ‘inadequate’, adding: “The overall arrangement of this children’s room was not conducive to a caring, nurturing environment or learning. . In general, there was no structured arrangement for play activities.”
Roughley testified during her trial. She said she complained about the ‘total amount of children’, but was not listened to.
National guidelines state that there must be at least one member of staff for every three children under the age of two in nurseries in England. At Tiny Toes, numbers far exceeded those levels. On the day Genevieve died, Roughley was one of two staff members looking after 11 children.
Ofsted suspended the license of Tiny Toes nursery the day after Genevieve’s death. Four months later, an inspection found it had failed to meet its legal requirements and, soon after, the nursery’s owners withdrew the licence. Another nursery is now operating from the former Tiny Toes premises.
An Ofsted report on Tiny Toes from October 2022 said: “On 10 May 2022, the provider informed us that a child became unresponsive at nursery and died in hospital.
“We suspended the provider’s registration on 10 May 2022 because we believe children may be at risk of harm. Suspension allows time for the provider to take steps to reduce or eliminate the risk of harm to children.
“On 2, 5 and 28 September 2022, we carried out regulatory visits. We discovered that the provider was not complying with some of the requirements. On 27 September 2022, the provider appealed against the decision to suspend registration. Before the appeal has taken place, the provider has deregistered and is no longer registered with Ofsted.”
This year, the Manchester Evening News spoke to a number of parents whose children attended Tiny Toes.
One said of his child: “We took him out and he would be screaming all the time. We thought it was separation anxiety and being around new people, because he was a child about green. There were always queues of parents picking up their children, 20 to 30 people deep.
The father said he cried every time they went to pick up his boy.
Another parent said: “There was no interaction with my son. He is always upset when we try to talk to him about it. He was left alone.”
Meanwhile a third, who indicated that his son was one of Genevieve’s peers, said: “He wasn’t there that morning when that happened, but he was on other days.”
The father said that after Covid, parents were told to leave their children at reception – and could not go into the nursery itself to collect them.
“We couldn’t see what was going on there,” he said. “Now we know.”
