Nursery where Scots baby choked to death on mango fined £800k

dailyrecord.co.uk:

A nursery chain 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. 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.

Upon her return, she thought the tot was sleeping before realising he wasn’t breathing and began slapping his back to dislodge any food.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”.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and a support team had been put in place by Bright Horizons to help cope with the workload.That extra support was withdrawn on May 21 and