I am writing this as the father of a child, who had an extremely disappointing experience with Hazel.

We agreed approx 9 months ago for our son to use Hazel's childcare services on the explicit basis of using government funding. Everything started off well, however, as the time to start approached we witnessed a total lack of professionalism, misleading practices and outright breaches of our contract.

We repeatedly tried to arrange settling in sessions, but found her very evasive and unable to ever confirm dates with us. 1 week prior to starting she announced she would not be willing to apply for government funding and said she would only take us with private funding (despite our entire agreement not being on this basis, funding codes being provided months ago etc.). She also said she couldn't guarantee any start dates or even the future dates we could attend given some family issues she was experiencing.

The unwillingness to utilise government funding contradicts with DfE and local council guidelines, violates our contract signed 9 months ago, and conflicts with what is even written on her profile as of today. Her inability to schedule the settling in sessions and transition to the start of our care also shows a deep disregard for our child's well-being and fact that it would leave us without any care options just as my wife is finishing maternity leave.

More strangely, as all of this occurred, she still continued on with her existing client base and held the sessions with them. For example, on the date she cancelled one of our settling sessions because of her family circumstances, she still had the other children attend as usual.

Hazel unfortunately had an unwell family member and was upset about her teenage daughter not getting into her sixth form school of choice. Whilst we have sympathy for these unexpected issues and were willing to be flexible, these to do not justify her response or the difficult position she left us in. Every conversation we had with her following her news centred around herself, how she felt, how she needed flexibility, how she couldn't manage the stress of applying for government funding etc. During our various messages and telephone calls following all of this, Hazel never once apologised, acknowledged the stress/anxiety she created for my wife/child, or even had any sympathy for leaving us stranded without childcare at such short notice (especially as it's difficult to arrange alternatives!).

In genuine reflection, I must wonder that if such events could upset her so much and think only of herself, whether she therefore remained fit to act as a childminder for very young, vulnerable and impressionable babies/children.

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