It has been announced that 120 places of vital nursery provision for key workers Kings College Hospital (KCH) and South London and Maudsley (SLAM) NHS Trusts will close in February 2025.  This is despite both Trusts u-turning on previous decisions to close the nurseries in 2022, after recognising the negative impact that this would have and committing to maintaining NHS run nursery provisions.

Parents and carers who are staff members that use the nursery have raised that in the absence of this vital workplace provision, they may have to stop working and stay at home, or look for jobs elsewhere, with potential serious implications for patient safety and standards of care.  The closure of the nursery will particularly impact female and low earning NHS staff.

 
Our nurseries:

Mapother House at Maudsley Hospital holds both the King’s College Hospital Day Nursery and SLAM’s Cedar House Day Nursery. The nurseries are staffed by highly skilled, compassionate and dedicated early years practitioners.  They have provided specialised, experienced, affordable and quality care to NHS key workers for decades.  
 
Both Nurseries have provided affordable and high-quality early years care for children of staff who work for KCH and SLAM Trusts for decades.  The dedicated nursery staff teams provide an exceptionally high level of care to our children and this has been recognised formally by a recent OFSTED Outstanding rating for Cedar House (February 2025).

Additionally, Nursery staff are facing a speedy consultation and the suggestion that instead of being offered proper redundancy, they may re-deployed into other non-clinical roles across the Trust which do not value their knowledge and skills as early years practitioners.

 
Our petition:
  
The withdrawal of this key staff benefit is likely to have a significant impact on the families of many NHS staff, particularly disadvantaging women.  It would result in a significant cost barrier for many NHS staff hoping to return to work or being able to return to work flexibly after having a child, and is likely to result in committed and skilled staff leaving both Trusts (who are already struggling to recruit and retain staff).  This subsequently has potential implications for patient safety and standards of care.  Additionally, nursery staff, a skilled and highly valued part of our workforce (many of whom have worked for the Trusts for many years), also face losing their jobs.
 
An on-site, high quality, affordable nursery offers invaluable support to local NHS staff and their families, and we strongly believe that this is critical now (especially in the context of a significant cost of living) and in the future.

In the context of the new Government prioritising affordable childcare to support working parents, SLAM and KCH NHS Trusts have taken the decision to go in the opposite direction and remove vital support for families that has been in place for decades.

Please support us in our second fight to save our NHS Nurseries in South London !

 

 

Previous campaigns:

https://www.change.org/p/south-london-and-maudsley-nhs-foundation-trust-save-south-london-and-maudsley-trust-nhs-nursery​

https://www.change.org/p/keep-king-s-day-nursery-open