Humza Yousaf complaint against nursery upheld

A complaint made by Health Secretary Humza Yousaf against a Dundee nursery has been upheld.

Yousaf accused Little Scholars, in Broughty Ferry, of discriminating against his daughter after Yousaf and his wife Nadia El-Nakla were told there was no space for their child – but said applications with “white Scottish-sounding names” were being accepted.

The nursery has denied the accusation made by the Health Secretary, but the Care Inspectorate, a government watchdog, has now upheld Yousaf’s formal complaint.

A spokesperson for the Care Inspectorate said: "We have upheld a complaint in relation to this matter. We found that the service did not promote fairness, equality and respect when offering placements.

"Every child in Scotland has the right to good quality care that meets their needs and respects their rights.

"We have identified areas for improvement and we will follow up on these to check on progress.

"We continue to monitor this service. If we are not satisfied that the improvements required have been met, we will not hesitate to take further action."

Little Scholars has now been ordered to demonstrate, by 12 December, that “the service is being well led and managed”.

Nursery bosses must also ensure that “consistent and robust systems are introduced to manage admission requests so that these are processed in a transparent and equitable manner”.

In response to the Care Inspectorate's statement, a spokesperson for Little Scholars Day Nursery said: “This is an extremely suspicious and highly misleading statement, issued to the media without any notice being given to us and with a particularly inaccurate and partisan spin. 

“Contrary to the media statement issued by the Care Inspectorate, there were no findings of discrimination or any issues with a lack of equality upheld by the investigation or contained within its official report. 

“We have therefore instructed our lawyers to demand answers from the Care Inspectorate as to how this inaccurate statement was issued. 

“As a small family business, we’re always looking at ways we can improve things. Whilst the Care Inspectorate found our admission procedure could be improved, this had notihing to do with discrimination or equality and within a few days of becoming aware of Mr Yousaf and Ms El-Nakla’s complaint, we reviewed and updated our system for dealing with admissions."