Nursery death of baby Genevieve Meehan raises troubling questions

Baby Genevieve Meehan, known to her family as Gigi, was her usual happy self when she arrived at Tiny Toes nursery on an overcast Monday morning in May 2022.

The nine-month-old girl with the striking emerald eyes had just taken her first steps and was uttering her first words. She had spent the weekend at home with her parents, enjoying cuddles and playing with her favourite toy tambourine.

In a drop-off routine familiar to millions of parents, Katie Wheeler, her mother, told staff that Genevieve had been a bit “snotty” but was otherwise fine. And with a goodbye, she said: “I love you, sweetie.”

Just over seven hours later, Genevieve was pronounced dead. In what was supposed to be the safest place in the world, she had been strapped face down to a beanbag for an hour and 37 minutes while her cries of distress went ignored. She was eventually found lifeless and blue, having died of suffocation.

Kate Roughley, the deputy manager of the nursery in Cheadle Hulme, Stockport, was found guilty of manslaughter on Monday after a trial at Manchester crown court. She will be sentenced at a later date.

While there were suggestions during the trial that Roughley, 37, was a bad apple in a dysfunctional nursery, Genevieve’s death raises wider troubling questions. Why was the little girl left unchecked for so long? Did staff shortages contribute to her death? And perhaps the most pressing question: could it happen again?

The neglect meted out by Roughley was captured in minute-by-minute detail by the baby room’s CCTV camera on 9 May 2022.

It showed the nursery worker becoming frustrated with Genevieve when she woke up from a nap within 20 minutes, barely an hour after she had arrived at 9.01am.

Roughley, the head of the baby room, could be seen picking the little girl out of her cot and placing her impatiently on a play mat, muttering: “Vile” and “Twenty minutes. Twenty minutes.”

Within an hour, Roughley was seen clapping and singing, “Oh Genevieve. Genevieve go home, Genevieve go home, go home Genevieve,” as the youngster cried on the play mat.

Days earlier, Roughley had told her “stop your whingeing” and said: “Genevieve, if we had any chance of being friends, you just blew it,” later adding: “You are driving me bananas.”

The nursery worker, who told jurors she had wanted to work with children since she was in school, had worked at Tiny Toes for 17 years, since she was 18.

Little was told to the trial about Roughley’s personal life but she is believed to have lived with a partner and their pet dog. Five days before Genevieve died, Roughley posted an image on Facebook with the words: “Sometimes I feel bad for not calling or checking up on people, but then I realise the phone works both ways and there ain’t nobody checking up on me.” She added: “Just going to leave this here … ”

Shortly before 1.30pm on 9 May, Roughley complained to a colleague that the nine-month-old had been awake for nearly three hours. She said she would “rather put her on the bean bag” than “waste a cot”.

She swaddled the youngster in a blanket and put her on her front on to a bean bag. She then fastened a strap across Genevieve’s back before she placed another cover over her.

CCTV footage showed that one hour and 37 minutes later she approached Genevieve, leaned over and placed her right hand on the child’s back for several seconds. Roughley then crouched down, lifted the cover and flipped Genevieve over before she jumped up and said: “Shit, she’s not breathing.”

A colleague replied: “What?” Roughley repeated: “She’s not breathing” and then hurriedly walked out of the room.

Jurors were told that Genevieve was unstrapped and carried to a play mat. Her little body, wearing a blue T-shirt with the words “Marais is the best district in Paris,” appeared floppy as her head fell back and her legs dangled.

Four staff members gathered around her, calling her name as they attempted to rouse her without success.

Paramedics rushed Genevieve to Stepping Hill hospital, little more than 3 miles away. When they arrived, her father, John Meehan, was waiting outside A&E. He could see the paramedics performing CPR on his daughter in the back of the ambulance. It was too late. She was pronounced dead at 4.09pm.

Giving evidence on the second anniversary of Genevieve’s death, Roughley denied she had “persecuted” the child, saying she treated her like “any other child in my care”.

As Genevieve’s parents watched on, she added: “I feel responsible in the fact that Genevieve was in my care that day. However, I don’t feel my actions were the reason for the death.”

Tiny Toes nursery was suspended by Ofsted, the regulator, the day after the little girl’s death. Four months later, an inspection found it had failed to meet its legal requirements and soon after the nursery’s owners, Franck and Karen Pelle, relinquished their licence.

It was a disastrous turn of events for a nursery that had been rated as good five years earlier, its most recent inspection.

The trial heard testimony, including from Roughley herself, of a chaotic, understaffed and poorly run nursery in the weeks leading up to Genevieve’s death.

Megan Goldsby, who worked in the toddler room, said the setting was “very badly” run. “We had too many children,” she told the trial, adding that national staffing ratios were not followed and “did not reflect reality”.

National guidelines state that there must be at least one member of staff for every three children aged under two in nurseries in England.

But at Tiny Toes, the ratios far exceeded those levels, the court was told: at various times they were one to nine, two to 11, two to 13 and one to 16.

On the day Genevieve died, Roughley was only one of two members of staff looking after 11 babies. The previous weekday there were 16 babies.

The nursery’s shocking fall in standards is likely to raise pressure on Ofsted to carry out more regular inspections of early-years settings.

At present, the regulator is only obliged to inspect nurseries in England once every six years, compared with once every four academic years for schools.

There are also questions about whether regulations should be tightened to explicitly ban the use of bean bags as sleep aids. These are widely available online despite being declared unsafe by the Lullaby Trust, a charity that promotes safe sleeping.

Strapping a swaddled child to any item would appear to be a blatant breach of the government’s guidance for early years sleeping arrangements, although there is no explicit ban on bean bags.

Roughley’s barrister, Sarah Elliott KC, told jurors to consider the behaviour of the nursery management, not just the defendant.

Bosses were able to see a live CCTV feed of the baby room, Elliott said, adding that her client was being blamed for “minor losses of patience or rushing” while handling an “overwhelming” number of children.

“You may think that there are a number of people the crown could have put in the dock,” she added. “But they have chosen to blame Kate Roughley.”

In the end, jurors chose to convict Roughley, but Genevieve’s harrowing death will raise searching questions far beyond one nursery worker.