It was a place where parents trusted staff with the lives of their precious children. To keep them safe, look after them and to care for them.
But on May 9, 2022, in the leafy suburb of Cheadle Hulme, the Tiny Toes nursery, featuring portraits of joyous smiling tots on the outside, became the scene of unthinkable tragedy.
Parents who paid hundreds of pounds a week in fees now know that the nursery’s cheerful image was a ‘front’. In reality, this was a place where a number of babies had been threatened, manhandled and placed at risk.
The first sign that something was deeply amiss came in an afternoon phone call. John Meehan was on the school run when he was told the worst possible news. He was told 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’ve been our son who died… I feel guilty for feeling lucky it wasn’t”
Now, almost two-and-a-half years later, the full story of what went on at Tiny Toes can be told. Following a series of court hearings, with the most recent concluding this week, two workers – a nursery nurse and the centre’s former deputy manager – are serving time behind bars for their treatment of the innocent babies who depended on them.
But those sentences won’t bring back nine-month-old Genevieve Zofia Meehan, who died from asphyxia and ‘pathophysiological stress’ caused by deputy manager Kate Roughley, who was jailed in May. And they don’t erase the trauma endured by her parents, or the parents of the four other children subjected to ‘rough and aggressive’ treatment and placed in ‘dangerous’ sleeping positions by nursery nurse Rebecca Gregory, who was jailed this week.
The four children who survived the neglect they were subjected to at Tiny Toes were mistreated on April 26, 2022 – about two weeks before Genevieve died. But it was only when police investigated the death of little ‘Gigi’ that they uncovered the other offences – revealing what had really been going on behind closed doors.
Kate Roughley, in her role as ‘baby room leader’, had swaddled Genevieve before placing 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 of this year after being convicted of the manslaughter of Genevieve by ill-treatment.
The subsequent investigations and trawl through CCTV footage led officers to the door of nursery nurse Rebecca Gregory, who was also based in the baby room.
Her position was to ‘care for the youngest and most vulnerable children at the nursery,’ a hearing at Minshull Street Crown Court heard on Monday.
Yet, on one day in April 2022, she had swaddled four young children, all aged between nine and twelve months at the time, placing one child face down while he had a dummy in his mouth, before covering his face with a blanket and ‘threatening to kick’ another as he cried out.
Prosecution for the case said she ‘mistreated’ four babies, three boys and one girl, with CCTV showing her being ‘rough and aggressive’ and placing them in ‘dangerous’ positions to sleep.
Swaddling babies and lying them face down, covering their faces with a blanket, was described in court as ‘dangerous practice’ that could cause ‘increased risk of suffocation, overheating and sudden infant death syndrome.’
The mum of one baby boy, who was told by Gregory to ‘shut up’ before his head hit the floor as he was ‘thrown’ down onto a blanket to be swaddled – and then sworn at before falling onto his face – said in a victim impact statement she ‘could not believe’ what was going on at the day centre.
Prosecuting, Mr Tom Challinor said: “She [his mum] said it’s affected the family emotionally and disruption it’s caused with taking her son out of nursery.
“She felt like the nursery provided a front. She could not believe this was going on. She felt guilty for feeling lucky that it wasn’t her son who died – but recognises it could have been.”
Gregory also ‘threatened to knock out’ another little girl who she had swaddled and placed face down on a mat, with her head covered by a blanket. She swaddled another and placed him in the same way, face down, with a dummy in his mouth.
On November 14 2023, Gregory was arrested at her home. When presented with the evidence in her interview, she admitted her actions against the children, claiming the nursery was understaffed.
Defending, Ms Milena Bennett, said that Gregory’s behaviour was ‘out of character’ and claimed that the nursery worker had complained about staffing levels but had been ‘knocked back’.
Gregory pleaded guilty to four counts of wilfully assaulting, ill-treating, neglecting, abandoning or exposing a child in a manner likely to cause unnecessary suffering and was jailed for three years.
Sentencing, Judge Tina Landale told her: “It is clear that you did not care for these babies. You displayed a persistent course of conduct when you did not think you were being observed. These babies were particularly vulnerable because they could not communicate their distress.”
The same claims about understaffing were made by Ms Roughley after the death of Genevieve. During Roughley’s trial, Megan Goldsby, an early years practitioner, was asked by prosecutors to summarise her views on how the facility operated.
“Not great,” she told jurors. “It was very badly run. We had too many children.”
Jurors also heard evidence from Catherine Knowles, an independent children’s social work consultant, who said the available floor space was ‘not sufficient’, adding: “The whole set-up of this baby room was not conducive to a caring, nurturing or learning environment. In general, there was no structured set-up for play activities.”
Roughley gave evidence during her trial. She said she had complained about the ‘sheer volume of children’, but wasn’t listened to.
National guidelines state there must be at least one member of staff for every three children aged under two in nurseries in England. At Tiny Toes, numbers far exceeded those levels. The day Genevieve died, Roughley was one of two staff members looking after 11 babies.
Tiny Toes Nursery’s licence to operate was suspended by Ofsted the day after Genevieve died. Four months later, an inspection found it had failed to meet its legal requirements and, soon after, the nursery’s owners gave up the licence. A different nursery now operates from Tiny Toes’ former premises.
A Ofsted report into Tiny Toes from October 2022 stated: “On 10 May 2022, the provider notified us that a baby became unresponsive at nursery and died at 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 found the provider was not meeting some of the requirements. On 27 September 2022, the provider appealed to the decision to suspend registration. Before the appeal took place, the provider resigned their registration and is no longer registered with Ofsted.”
This year, the Manchester Evening News has spoken to number of parents whose children attended Tiny Toes.
One said of their child: “We would drop him off and he would scream all the time. We thought it was separation anxiety and being around new people, due to him being a lockdown baby. There were always queues of parents picking up their children, 20 to 30 people deep.
The dad added that every time they went to pick his little boy up, ‘he was crying.’
Another parent said: “My son wasn’t being interacted with. He always gets upset when we try to speak to him about it. He was left on his own.”
Meanwhile a third, who revealed 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 drop their children off at reception – and were unable to go into the nursery itself to collect them.
“We couldn’t see what was going on in there,” he added. “Now we know.”
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