Silent Nurseries, Silenced Voices: How Early Years Settings Can Build a Speak-Up Culture for Children, Parents and Staff

Dec 10 / Kirstie Jones, Childcare and Early Years Consultant

Speak-up culture isn’t what you write in a policy, it’s what people expect will happen if they tell the truth on a difficult day.

Most leaders, practitioners and staff can quickly produce a safeguarding policy, a whistleblowing policy, and a complaints procedure if asked. But if you asked any staff, students, assistants or parents, in practice:

  “If you were worried about a child, a colleague, 
       or my decisions… would you know exactly what
       to do?"
   "And would you actually feel safe doing  it?"


...What would they say?


When time, budgets and energy are tight – such as in the current climate - we tend to focus on ratios, rotas and paperwork. Culture sits quietly in the background. The trouble is, silent cultures don’t stay quiet. Instead, they show up later as safeguarding failures, staff burnout, reputational damage and children who weren’t heard when it mattered most.


At the same time, there has never been more pressure on childcare, play and early years leaders to prove they have robust safeguarding, psychological safety and whistleblowing arrangements in place. In Wales, joint CIW/Estyn inspecting safeguarding guidance, Keeping Learners Safe, and the Social Care Wales Your Well-being Matters Framework push providers to evidence safe, well-led cultures for children and staff; in England,  the revised EYFS and Ofsted’s Big Listen have sharpened expectations; and in the UAE, Wadeema’s Child Rights Law, alongside ADEK’s safeguarding and whistleblowing requirements for early education institutions, and KHDA’s Wellbeing Matters framework for Dubai schools, are raising the bar in a similar way. High-profile nursery abuse cases and workforce wellbeing data simply underline the same message: settings need intentional, well-led speak-up cultures for children, for staff, and for families. This isn’t just a compliance issue. It’s a leadership capability and, ultimately, a career capital issue too.

The Evidence Base: Psychological Safety, Voice Climate and Early Years Quality

The OECD’s Starting Strong reports keep coming back to one big idea: what matters most for children’s outcomes is process quality; the everyday interactions between children and adults.

High-quality interactions don’t begin by magic. They grow in environments where:

  • Adults feel psychologically safe where they can ask for help, admit mistakes and raise worries without fear of blame.
  • There is a strong voice climate; a shared norm that speaking up about concerns and ideas is expected, safe and worthwhile.
  • Leaders intentionally design policy, supervision, and routines around those principles, not just around compliance.


Research on psychological safety and employee voice consistently links strong speak-up cultures with better error detection and safety outcomes, improved performance and innovation, higher staff engagement and retention, and more ethical behaviour with fewer cover-ups (e.g. Frazier et al., 2017; Ito et al., 2021; CIPD, 2019; CIPD, 2024; CIPD, 2025; Lee et al., 2021).

Early years studies add another layer: staff wellbeing and feeling respected and listened to are directly connected to the quality of interactions with children and families. When the adults are silenced or scared, you see it, and feel it by how others react and what they say.

So, when we talk about speak-up culture in nurseries, we’re not talking about a “nice extra” to have. We’re talking about the very foundation for:

  • Safeguarding
  • Process quality
  • Workforce sustainability.


And, if you’re thinking like a strategic leader,  we’re also talking about a very real part of your leadership career capital. (If you want to read more about career capital, read the earlier blog post).

When Nurseries Go Quiet. What Recent Cases Teach Us

We’ll keep this brief and respectful, but as leaders we need to look honestly at where things have gone wrong.


1. The Vincent Chan case – weak signals and slow responses

It hit the headlines recently in December 2025, nursery practitioner Vincent Chan was convicted of serious sexual offences against toddlers at a Bright Horizons nursery in north London. The public details are deeply distressing.


What’s important for our purposes is the pattern:
A colleague noticed mocking, demeaning behaviour towards children and raised concerns.

  • Parents later described worries about injuries and behaviour changes that, in their view, were not acted on quickly enough.
  • Questions were raised about supervision, record keeping and device use, despite apparently adequate paperwork.


This is a classic ‘weak signals’ situation. The early indicators were there – staff discomfort, parental unease – but the culture and systems didn’t transform those signals into decisive action soon enough.

A strong speak-up culture doesn’t rely on everyone being absolutely certain before they talk. It encourages over-cautious curiosity:

                “I’m not sure what I’m seeing, but something doesn’t sit right and I know exactly who to tell, without fear of being dismissed
                  or punished.”

2. Vanessa George & Little Ted’s – when paperwork says “good” but the culture isn’t

The Little Ted’s Nursery case in Plymouth is now a historic example, but still uncomfortably relevant, especially given recent news. Practitioner Vanessa George abused children over a period of time, sharing images online. Subsequent serious case reviews highlighted:

  • Weak management oversight and safeguarding training
  • A culture where staff didn’t feel empowered or equipped to challenge
  • The uncomfortable fact that the nursery had been rated positively on child protection shortly before.

In other words, policies on paper, but silent culture in practice.

This case helped push the sector towards talking about safeguarding culture, not just ‘having the right documents’. But it’s easy, years later, to assume “we’d never let that happen here”  while still operating with unintentional silencing habits:

  • Rolling eyes at ‘over-anxious’ staff or parents
  • Labelling colleagues as ‘negative’ or difficult when they raise concerns
  • Treating minor complaints as irritations instead of early warning signs.


3. Inspection fear, wellbeing and the early years workforce

Zoom out from individual cases and another pattern emerges.

  • Ofsted’s Big Listen heard strongly from early years and school leaders about a 'culture of fear' around inspection – stress, anxiety, and worries about fairness. Whilst this arose from a review in England, fear of inspection is a fairly universal feeling across borders.
  • Research summarised by organisations such as the Froebel Trust and Social Care Wales shows early years staff describing high stress, low status, and significant emotional load, with many practitioners feeling that their voices, and expertise, are not fully respected.
  • At the same time, the revised EYFS and updated whistleblowing guidance expect leaders to create a climate where staff can raise concerns confidently and escalate beyond the setting if necessary.


That’s a tough professional dilemma: You’re anxious about scrutiny and stretched on resources, whilst simultaneously responsible for making it safer for other people to scrutinise, question and report.


This is exactly where leadership and career capital come in. The ability to build and sustain a speak-up culture under pressure is not just good practice, but a standout leadership capability.


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What a Speak-Up Culture Looks Like in Childcare, Play and Early Years Practice

How would this appear in practice? In a childcare or early years setting with a strong speak-up culture, you’d see:

• Staff voice as part of the job which is not tokenistic
Everyone, from apprentices to room leaders to the cook, is expected to raise safeguarding and quality concerns. It’s framed as part of professional responsibility, not ‘being difficult’.

• Low interpersonal risk
People trust that raising a concern won’t cost them their job, their hours, or their relationships. Mistakes are taken seriously, but the default response is curiosity and learning, never humiliation.

• Clear, trusted routes for all staff, students and volunteers
There’s a simple, well-known escalation path beyond the immediate manager, and people have seen it work.

• Parent voice treated as an asset, not a threat
Concerns and complaints are welcomed as early warning systems. Parents are shown ‘you said, we did’ examples regularly.

• Child voice embedded in everyday routines
For children under 5 years this is often non-verbal or indirect: play themes, behaviour changes, body language. Staff are trained and supervised to notice, reflect and escalate patterns, not just incidents.

• A 'just culture' around error
Honest mistakes, near-misses and worries are surfaced and used as learning fuel; reckless or malicious behaviour is still dealt with firmly and fairly. This isn’t about being soft but about being deliberately safe and smart.

Building Speak-Up Career Capital as a Childcare and Early Years Leader

At Future Roots and Roots of Excellence Academy, we talk a lot about career capital – the mix of skills, relationships and purpose you accumulate over time.

Designing and defending a speak-up culture is one of the most powerful forms of leadership career capital you can build, because it shows you can:

  • Lead safeguarding in a way that is both robust and considerate
  • Navigate inspection, complaints and scrutiny with integrity and transparency
  • Hold your nerve when concerns are raised about you or your setting
  • Build trust with staff, families and regulators over the long term.

If we apply the 'three knowings' of career capital to speak-up culture:

  • Knowing why – your deep, values-driven reasons for wanting a culture where children, staff and parents are heard.
  • Knowing how – the concrete skills: running reflective supervision, responding well to bad news, writing and implementing a just culture policy.
  • Knowing whom – your network of trusted peers, mentors and external partners (safeguarding leads, local authority contacts, professional communities) who can advise, challenge and support you.

Investing in these isn’t indulgence, rather an insurance for children, for your team, and for your own professional future.



A Four-Step Cycle for Designing a Speak-Up Culture (The Future Roots Approach)


Whether your culture already feels healthy or you know there are 'no-go topics' in your team, starting with a structured cycle helps.




Step 1 – Diagnose

Run a quick, (honest) self-audit:

  • How confident are different staff groups (including students and agency staff) about raising concerns?
  • How easy is it for parents to give negative feedback, and what happens when they do?
  • When was the last time a child’s voice led to a clear change in practice?

This is where our Speak-Up Culture Mini-Audit (part of our consultancy toolkit) comes in handy: it surfaces gaps you might no longer see from the inside.

Step 2 – Design

Choose one or two changes that fit your context. For example:

  • Introducing a simple worry escalation flowchart into inductions
  • Redesigning supervision templates to include a “what’s worrying you?” section
  • Refreshing your whistleblowing policy and aligning it with CIW regulations, National Minimum Standards or EYFS expectations
  • Setting up a parent feedback loop that visibly closes the “you said, we did” cycle.

Tie these design choices back to your curriculum, safeguarding, quality of care and improvement plans, so they feel integral, not just bolted on. But key is to ensure the implementation reflects the intention.


Step 3 – Do

Implement small cycles of practice:

  • Pilot new processes in one room or with one group of staff
  • Use short, focused team discussions (15–20 minutes) to rehearse “what would you do if…?” scenarios
  • Model the culture you want by actively thanking people who bring uncomfortable news.

This is where coaching, action learning sets or our Roots of Excellence Academy short courses can give you both structure and community.

Step 4 – Demonstrate

Gather evidence that your speak-up culture is taking root:

  • Examples of concerns raised early and responded to well
  • Stories from staff and parents about feeling heard
  • Shifts in supervision notes, complaint themes or incident patterns.


Use this evidence in three directions:

  • Outwards – for inspection, local authority conversations and marketing to families seeking quality
  • Inwards – to build confidence, pride and shared ownership in your team
  • For you – as career capital: concrete examples of leading culture change to bring into applications, interviews and pay/role discussions.
Your 90-Day Speak-Up Starter Plan

Here’s a realistic timeline for busy leaders.

Weeks 1–2: Baseline and listening

  • Run a rapid, anonymous staff pulse check on psychological safety and speak-up confidence.
  • Map your current staff, parent and child voice channels.
  • Review your whistleblowing / complaints policy with a ‘fresh eyes’ lens.

Weeks 3–6: One focused intervention

Choose one priority area (e.g. staff voice) and:

  • Co-design or refresh an escalation flowchart with your team.
  • Agree a set of speak-up norms (“In this setting, we…”) and share them widely.
  • Join a focused learning space, for example, a Roots of Excellence Academy module and community on psychological safety and inspection-ready leadership to sharpen your skills and build your network (“knowing whom”).

Weeks 7–12: Embed, evidence, share

  • Put your intervention into practice.
  • Build in 10 minutes at the end of staff meetings for “what have we heard this month and how did we respond?”
  • Collect 3–5 “you said, we did” examples from staff and families and share them across your setting.
  • Reflect on what you’ve learned about your own leadership strengths and edges and capture it in your career capital audit.

The Business Case:  Why a Speak-Up Culture Pays for Itself

If you need to justify time and investment to an owner, headteacher, board or trust, here’s the headline argument:

1. Inspection readiness
Inspectorates are increasingly interested in culture, not just compliance. They want to know:
• How you know staff feel confident to raise concerns
• How you respond to complaints and whistleblowing
• How children’s and parents’ voices shape practice.
Being able to show intentional work on speak-up culture – with evidence – is a powerful signal of leadership quality and maturity.

2. Quality provision and safeguarding
Speak-up cultures catch problems earlier:
• Concerns about practice or behaviour are raised before harm escalates
• Policies are stress-tested in real time instead of sitting on a shelf
• Children’s signals are taken seriously because adults are trained and supported to notice and act.
In a sector under intense scrutiny, this is non-negotiable.

3. Workforce retention and morale
Staff who feel listened to and safe to speak up are more likely to:
• Stay in the sector and in your setting
• Go beyond the basics in their role
• Engage meaningfully in professional development.
Leadership development that strengthens your ability to build psychological safety and voice climate is a force multiplier: it improves interactions, implementation and retention simultaneously.

4. Your leadership career capital
Being able to say, with evidence:
“I led a shift from a fearful, compliance-driven culture to a confident, speak-up culture that improved safeguarding, inspection outcomes and staff wellbeing”
…is a serious asset in your professional story.
It increases your options, whether that’s leading a larger setting, stepping into a group/chain role, or shaping policy and practice at system level.


Key Takeaway



Silent cultures don’t happen by accident, and neither do speak-up cultures.


As a childcare and early years leader or educator, intentionally designing how children, parents and staff can raise concerns and ideas is one of the most powerful levers you have for:

  • Keeping children safe
  • Improving process quality
  • Protecting and energising your workforce
  • Building your own long-term career capital.

Treat your speak-up culture like you treat your curriculum: planned, resourced, reviewed and improved, not left to chance.

Free Resource: Career Capital & Early Years Leadership Audit (with 90-Day Plan)


If you’re ready to make this practical, we’ve created a FREE Career Capital and Early Years Leadership Audit template, including a:

  • Simple self-audit across the three 'knowings' of career capital
  • Section on how confidently you’re leading speak-up and psychological safety
  • 90-day planning grid to map out your next steps (for both your setting and your own development)


Use it to:

  • Clarify where your strengths already lie
  • Spot gaps in your leadership toolkit around culture, voice and psychological safety
  • Build a realistic plan that fits actual time and budget constraints. 


Download your free Career Capital & Early Years Leadership Audit with 90-Day Plan
…and take the first intentional step towards a stronger speak-up culture, a more resilient team, and a leadership career that has the impact, and recognition, you deserve.


Future Roots and Roots of Excellence Academy are here as to support you and give you the skills, tools and community you need.







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