Teacher accused of smacking kids, providing mouldy food, denying medical attention

The daycare centre owner is accused of not letting staff take a child who needed stitches in his head to get medical attention. Photo / 123rf

A preschool teacher whose centre was shut down has been accused of smacking children, feeding them out-of-date food, locking them in a room and denying proper medical attention to a toddler with a broken elbow and another with a head wound.

Other allegations against the early childhood teacher include abusing staff, making them scrub the floor on their hands and knees and telling parents they should smack their children.

The woman is facing charges of serious misconduct over a 10-year period at the daycare centre she owned and ran.

Today she faced the Teacher’s Disciplinary Tribunal almost two years after the Ministry of Education shut down the centre having identified 33 breaches.

The teacher, the centre and the witnesses all have interim name suppression at least until the conclusion of the hearing.

The centre owner has denied all of the allegations against her.

A former employee at the daycare centre told the tribunal the owner had constantly bullied her and other staff members, called them useless or “shit” and threatened to have their teachers’ licences revoked or threatened to fire them.

The witness told the tribunal one afternoon her bra broke and she wasn’t allowed to leave to buy a new one because she’d already had her lunch break.

“This made me feel very awkward and embarrassed as I had to interact with parents of the children without a bra on,” the woman said.

“I’ve never in my 20 years of teaching been treated as bad as I was.”

On another occasion the centre owner made the woman cry after telling her she was too fat to be eating Kentucky Fried Chicken for lunch.

However, the main thrust of the woman’s complaint to the Ministry in October 2018 was around food for the children that she claimed mainly consisted of sandwiches with little nutritional value.

The hearing is set down for the whole week in Palmerston North. Photo / Jeremy Wilkinson

She said she was yelled at by the owner after she threw out mouldy pots of yoghurt that were going to be fed to children.

The witness also mentioned an occasion where a staff member was yelled at for calling an ambulance for a child who was having convulsions.

In the case of the toddler with the arm injury, the teacher is charged with giving the child an icepack and a rag for what was eventually diagnosed as a broken elbow.

In another instance the owner allegedly forbade another employee from taking her grandchild - who was attending the centre - to the doctor until she’d finished her shift. The child had sustained a head wound that ultimately required multiple stitches.

“To me it’s neglecting a child… it’s a child with a split head, they need medical treatment as soon as they can,” she said.

The woman’s lawyer Phillip Drummond questioned the accuracy of the woman’s memory given the incident happened five years ago, and accused the woman of making up the complaint about her bra.

“Why would I do something like that?” she said. “Why would I make up something that embarrassing?”

She went on to say it was impossible to raise complaints about the centre’s owner because she would react aggressively and was the only person in the management chain they could raise concerns to directly.

“The only way to raise a complaint was to say it to her face,” the former employee said.

Drummond said the centre owner denied all of the former employee’s allegations and pointed out that no other staff were present to witness the incidents.

Another former employee of the centre told the tribunal every time she questioned the owner’s judgement or raised an issue her job was threatened and she was told she was incompetent.

She also said the owner would lock children in the sleep room when they misbehaved and was told to mind her own business when she objected to it.

The woman said she was told to simply cut the crusts off mouldy bread and that often the yoghurt she was asked to serve to the children had curdled.

The charge sheet also mentions allegations the woman engaged in and encouraged other staff to have inappropriate physical contact with children at the centre such as smacking them.

The charges note instances where she grabbed children and spanked them, made them spit out food or used her fingers to pull it from their mouths and told other teachers and parents to smack the children in order to get them to behave.

The Complaints Assessment Committee (CAC) prosecuting the woman on behalf of the Teaching Council said that in many ways the alleged bullying of staff was the worst aspect of conduct.

Counsel for the CAC Elena Mok said it highlighted a culture where employees were afraid to raise heir concerns.

“It creates a culture in which these practices can continue on unchecked,” Mok said.

“There’s no effective way of raising issues where the person you’re raising the issue with is responsible for your pay and has control over how the centre is run. "

A parent whose toddler attended the centre for roughly three years gave evidence that the centre’s owner suggested she smack her child to get him to behave despite “anti-smacking” legislation.

The woman also had issues with the food supplied and with the way the centre owner spoke to her.

She subsequently made a complaint to the Ministry of Education.

Drummond said the woman waged a social media war on the owner because she was disgruntled with the centre.

“You were on mission because you were dissatisfied with the treatment you got from the centre so you’ll go to the nth degree.”

Drummond said the parent lied about the woman telling her to smack her own child because she couldn’t remember the exact date, wasn’t overheard by anyone else and the fact she hadn’t included it in her complaint to the centre.