Last week I wrote a piece on LinkedIn about my deep concern about the news that the Department for Education have decided that our Community Playthings Dream Coracles are suddenly to be deemed unsafe for sleeping for babies under 12 months. Following the awful death of Genevieve Meehan in 2022, it is understandable that there should be clearer guidance about not using bean bags or floor cushions for children to sleep on, and the directive states that children should be “placed down on their back in their own separate sleep space on a firm flat surface such as a cot, bed or mattress on the floor. Babies aged 1 year and under must only be placed to sleep in a cot.”  Following queries about whether providers could continue to use the coracles that many nurseries now use for babies from six months, negating the need for cots, the response was that carrycots, moses baskets and travel cots could be used, but not any kind of floor bed, which is what the coracles are classed as. This feels utterly bizarre, as most nurseries would not consider carry cots, travel cots or moses baskets to be suitable, and many nurseries allow children to transition from cots to floor beds of some type at the point where they can start to pull themselves up and to move independently. The purpose-made coracles are increasingly popular in nurseries and loved by babies, toddlers and staff. Babies and toddlers often like to crawl into them when they’re tired, and staff can sit alongside them while they go to sleep to offer comfort and a reassuring presence – and someone is always present in the room during sleep time in order to respond quickly to those waking up.

Traditional cots take up a lot more space, pose a hazard to staff in terms of manual handling, with the need to bend over and lift, and are disliked by many babies. Our nurseries only take babies from six months, so we have phased out most of our cots, and much prefer having the coracles, which can be safely stacked when not in use, and therefore free up more play space. Apparently the rationale for the knee jerk reaction to reject any kind of ‘floor bed’ is due to an incident involving a 7-week-old baby involving a poorly designed bedside sleeper used at home. The coracles that we use are being used by thousands of nurseries in the UK and Europe and there have never been any safety incidents involving them. They have been extensively tested and their safety for use for children aged 6 to 20 months has been independently verified, and as early years professionals, we know from experience that they provide an ideal sleeping environment for nursery naps for babies over 6 months. They are safe by design – children can’t really fall out of them, they have no moving parts, and are hard to use incorrectly. Comparing a supervised sleep time at nursery with a bedside sleeping arrangement at home is ludicrous.

The speed of the implementation of this directive is astonishing. The DfE have said that they’re acting following a prevention of future deaths notice from the coroner in the BedNest case – which was in 2015. Having waited 11 years to act, they now want all settings to suddenly invest in alternative sleeping arrangements within just a few weeks!! We have had numerous Ofsted inspections, including Outstanding judgements and the new ‘Strong Standard’ and yet from the 1^st September we may be deemed to be breaching the requirements overnight if we don’t invest in cots that we don’t want!

Needless to say, we have no intention of buying a load of cots (and certainly not carry cots, travel cots or moses baskets). I’m keeping my fingers firmly crossed that common sense will prevail.  We’ve only had the news through third parties at the moment, so are hoping that it gets modified before the revised guidance comes directly to providers, but in the meantime, if anyone knows who at the DfE is responsible for this nonsensical directive, please ask them to come and see for themselves how well our current sleeping arrangements work!