A nursery chain in Edinburgh has been fined £800,000 over the death of a ten-month-old boy who choked on mango while unsupervised for “several minutes” during dinner.
Fox Goulding had been eating pudding at the Bright Horizons Corstorphine Nursery in Edinburgh when the tragedy happened.
As reported by the Daily Record, the city’s sheriff court heard on Tuesday how a nursery nurse sitting next to Fox during mealtime had left the room to go to the toilet.
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Upon her return, she thought the tot was sleeping before realising he wasn’t breathing and began slapping his back to dislodge any food.
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Fox was taken to hospital but died the following day. It was found he’d choked on a piece of mango measuring 3cm x 2.2cm x 1.5cm.
Bright Horizons Family Solutions pled guilty to failing to provide employees at the nursery with suitable instruction and supervision to adequately control the risk of choking during mealtimes.
The investigation found a number of occasions between May 21 2019 and July 9 2019 when staff were involved with other tasks and not watching children eat.
Sentencing the company, Sheriff Wendy Sheehan said it had “systems in place” over the supervision of eating, but they were “not sufficiently adhered to or implemented”.
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The sheriff said there had been two previous incidents which she described as “near-misses” at the nursery.
She said 24 employees were working there, but CCTV showed children were “routinely” not supervised while eating for a “few minutes” and up to the “whole mealtime”, with Fox left unsupervised for “several minutes” when he choked.
The nursery had been through a significant turnover of staff, the court heard, and a support team had been put in place by Bright Horizons to help cope with the workload.
hat extra support was withdrawn on May 21 and Fox, who had only been attending the nursery for seven days, took ill on July 9.
In her 22-page narrative of the events, fiscal depute Siobhan Ramage told how Fox was taken to nursery that morning by mum Fiona.
A nursery practitioner fed Fox a lunch of pasta bolognese and “there were no issues”, staff said. The tot was put down for a sleep and had “free play time” between 2pm and 3.30pm.
At 3.45pm the nursery manager brought the children’s food into the under two’s room. Fox was seated at one of two tables with four other children to eat.
The court heard a nursery nurse sitting next to Fox was given permission to go to the toilet from the room leader at around 4.20pm as youngsters ate raspberries and mango.
There were “six members of staff in the various areas of the room”, either tidying up, dealing with other children, speaking to parents collecting their kids, or supervising eating at the second table.
When the nursery nurse who went to the bathroom returned to Fox’s table, she believed he was sleeping.
It was then noticed his “face was blue and his lips purple” and he wasn’t breathing. The nursery nurse recalled giving Fox around 15 back slaps to try to dislodge anything in his airway.
Staff called for an ambulance and made desperate attempts to give Fox CPR, with the first paramedic arriving at 4.29pm.
Fox was taken to the Sick Kids Hospital in Edinburgh but died the next day.
Peter Gray QC, acting for Bright Horizons said the firm, which has 318 nurseries across the UK with 20 in Scotland, accepted that supervision policies at mealtimes were “not being implemented at all times”.
The court heard the Corstorphine nursery closed its doors and won’t reopen, while Bright Horizons reviewed its procedures and provided additional training to all Scottish staff.
Following the hearing, Ros Marshall, the firm’s managing director, said: “Our thoughts continue to be with Fox Goulding and his family. There are no words which are adequate to console them and we offer our heartfelt apologies.
“Our acceptance of responsibility today makes clear that the mealtime safety procedures we had in place at our Corstorphine Nursery in 2019 were not properly observed, with terrible consequences.”
