Early Years, Unequal Fears: A Nursery Worker’s Suspension Story

By Isyerofa Ninnfuto

On the morning it happens, the nursery smells the way it always does at opening time: warm porridge, poster paint, wet wool drying on radiators, the faint medicinal sweetness of hand gel rubbed into small palms. The children arrive in a scatter of coats and feelings. Some are brave and some are loud, some are quiet in the way a candle is quiet.

It is Graduation Day. The staff have tried to make the room look like a gentle celebration rather than a commercial event. Paper stars. A banner with letters cut out by tired hands. Little chairs lined up like a promise. There is talk of photos, of parents tearing up, of the children being excited about their final day at the nursery. All morning you are busy in the way early years work makes you busy: not in grand, measurable achievements, but in constant prevention. Preventing a pushed elbow from becoming a bruise. Preventing a small fear from becoming a lifelong dread.

You are not thinking about capitalism. You are thinking about snacks. You are thinking about whose water bottle is whose. You are thinking about the child who has started biting again, and the child who will not sit on the carpet unless you hold their hand. You are thinking about how your accent sometimes makes parents squint, as if you have brought weather from another country into the room.

And then, a manager appears beside you. Not angry, not smiling either. The look is practised, the kind that pretends to be neutral while carrying something heavy.

“Can you come to the office?”

It is a simple sentence. It should be simple. Yet your body hears it as a warning bell. If you are sensitive – and you are, because you have learnt that sensitivity is how you keep children safe – your heartbeat rises before your mind catches up. Blood pressure, heat in the face, sweat prickling your back. That small internal voice starts listing all the possible reasons, like a child counting to calm themself: Did I forget to log a nappy change? Did I miscount the headcount? Did I upset someone without noticing?

You follow them down the corridor where the walls are bright with children’s drawings that no one would ever dare call “productivity,” yet which are the most honest records of human effort you will see in any workplace. The office door closes behind you with a soft, definitive click.

Two managers sit there. Two chairs. One for you.

You sit.

They talk for three minutes. It is remarkable, later, how short it is. Three minutes is barely enough time to boil a kettle, barely enough time to persuade a toddler to put on a sock. Yet in three minutes a life can be unbuttoned.

“We’re suspending you.”

You wait for the rest of the sentence, because in ordinary human language that cannot be the whole thing. Suspended for what? For how long? On what evidence? What happens next?

But no further details arrive. The words just hang there, a sign with no directions underneath.

You feel tears before you decide to cry. Pride tries to take over, that old immigrant pride that says: do not beg, do not plead, do not show weakness to people who can use it. Your hands shake. You stand up too quickly. You are told, as if it is a procedural detail like signing in, that you must not speak to colleagues about this. That you must not tell anyone. That you must leave.

And so, you walk out of your own workplace as if you are doing something shameful. As if you are infectious.

In the corridor you pass a colleague and you have to perform sickness. Not the honest sickness of grief or shock, but the tidy, acceptable kind, the kind that does not implicate anyone. “I’m unwell,” you say, and it is true, though not in the way they mean.

A manager follows a few steps behind you, close enough to hear, close enough to remind you that your voice is being policed.

In the main room the children look up, surprised by your sudden departure. One of them asks, very softly, “What happened?”

There are days when a question is a small thing. This is not one of those days. In that moment you understand something bitter and symbolic: today is the day the children take their photos with staff, the day meant to record who helped them learn to zip coats and share toys and say sorry. And you will not be in the picture.

A grown-up can endure many humiliations. But there is a particular sting in being erased from a child’s memory by administrative decision. You are no longer a person in the story, just a disruption to be removed before the camera clicks. Erased from the memories of that year’s class, pretty much like so many important people erased by the history written by the ruling class.

You leave the building and the air outside feels too open, like stepping off a stage mid-scene. You go home. You lock the door. You sit down. You start searching online.

“What is suspension?”

The results are a mess of possibilities. Some suspensions are short. Some are the beginning of dismissal. Some are paid, some are not. Some are “neutral acts” and some are punishments dressed in neutral clothing. Every answer contains an if, a “maybe,” a “depends.”

You wait for the company to tell you which kind of suspension this is. A week goes by.

During that week you learn what silence costs. You are not allowed to speak to colleagues. You are told not to tell anyone you are suspended. The instruction is not only about confidentiality, you realise. It is about isolation. It is about removing witnesses, removing solidarity, removing the chance that someone else might say, “This is happening to me too.”

You begin looking at unions, because it seems obvious that a worker in trouble should be able to seek support. That is what unions are for, in the story people tell about working life. But you discover how fragmented that world is, how often it is organised around who is considered “proper” labour and who is treated as temporary, replaceable, not quite worth the administrative effort.

You also discover another fear, one that sits beneath every email and every delayed response: your visa.

It is hard to describe to someone who has never had their right to stay in a country quietly attached to their job how it changes your nervous system. It turns ordinary workplace conflict into an existential threat. A manager’s displeasure becomes a border guard. A performance review becomes a silent question: do you still deserve to be here?

Since Brexit, your qualifications from home do not land neatly on the island. You are trained, experienced, good at your work, but “good” is not always the same as “recognised.” You came to live here for love, for partnership, for a life that would contain both work and tenderness. You did not come to be treated as an administrative problem.

Then an email arrives.

You are required to attend a virtual hearing with a manager from another department. You have never met them. They are part of a large corporation, the kind of company that can speak warmly about children while running itself with the cold efficiency of an engine. According to policy, this stranger can question you, assess you, decide whether you remain employed. They have no legal background, but they have authority, which is a different thing and often more dangerous.

Before the hearing you receive rules: you must be alone in the room. You must not tell anyone. The language is almost intimate, as if they are asking you to keep a secret for your own safety, when really it is for theirs.

The manager appears on screen and begins with the same question.

“Are you alone?”

You confirm you are. It is humiliating, being forced to announce your solitude, but you do it because you have been trained, as so many workers are trained, to comply with the rituals that keep the company comfortable.

Then, finally, the reason for the suspension is revealed.

A “serious safety incident.”

It involves a former colleague.

For a moment you cannot even place it. Your mind flips through days the way a nursery flips through the weekly rota: this child, that activity, this minor accident, that near-miss. You land on the memory at last. A day when a colleague coughed, looked unwell, sat down, recovered. Ten minutes later they returned to work. There was no injury. No ambulance. No blood. No dramatic crisis, just a moment of fear in a job that contains many small fears. Also, probably, the only friend you’ve made during this job.

You speak emotionally, because you are being honest, and because you have learnt in early years that feelings are not ornaments, they are information. You explain that you asked if they wanted help, and they refused. You explain that you panicked, and that you called another colleague for support, because you did not want to do the wrong thing. You explain that you could not force first aid on someone who did not consent.

You feel uncertain. You remember the poorly executed, company-sponsored training session from two years ago. When the macho trainer – a former military professional – said “I am sure no one wants to stay here until 5pm.” But you should not mention this now. You remember the brief online “refresher” courses you were meant to complete by clicking “next” during unpaid hours from home. All these, of course, only mention safety procedures for children, not for colleagues.

“You know what to do if someone is choking, right? Why did you not put this into practice? Tell us what you would do.”

You have knowledge from ten years worth of work that when an adult refuses help, you don’t force it onto them. But this has become common knowledge for you, not something you learned in a specific training session. While you talk, you feel that your voice is getting lower, you mess up the words, your confidence is lost. You know your colleague was just coughing, but your manager talks about choking. The person on the other side of the screen doesn’t care what you think. They call it serious again, as if repeating the adjective can conjure harm where there was none. “Why did you not intervene?”

You say what seems obvious: you did intervene, by getting support and by checking on the colleague, and by not escalating the situation into something invasive or frightening. You also acknowledge that the certificate is scheduled to renew in two months. You do not deny what is true. You have no interest in pretending to be perfect. Nursery work has taught you that perfection is a lie adults tell themselves when they are afraid of mess.

The meeting ends. You feel, oddly, a small lift in your chest. Perhaps honesty will work. Perhaps they will see reason.

A month passes.

Nothing.

Still suspended. Still told not to speak to colleagues. Including your former colleague and friend who coughed, and left the job before your suspension. Still living with the sense that your life is paused in mid-air, like a child held above the floor, waiting to be set down.

You check your phone constantly. You begin to measure time in vibrations and notification sounds. At night you dream in emails.

Another message arrives. Another hearing. Another department. Another manager. Again, you are told the hearing is private, that you must be alone, that you must not share details with anyone. There is a new line this time, sharp as a snapped twig:

You do not have the right to a legal representative. You may only ask a colleague.

It is presented as a neutral rule, but it is not neutral. A colleague is someone who works under the same roof, under the same fear. Asking them to sit beside you is asking them to risk becoming a target. And you have been taught, in subtle ways, that targets are not safe. Moreover, how can you ask a colleague when you are not entitled to speak about this to anyone? And your friend is not a “colleague” anymore.

You attend alone again.

This time the tone shifts. The questions are the same but asked like accusations. Why didn’t you practise first aid? Why didn’t you do what you were trained to do? Why didn’t you insist?

The “insist” word lodges in your throat. Insist on touching someone who said no. Insist on taking control of their body because policy wants a tidy narrative. Insist because the company prefers the performance of safety to the actual meaning of it.

You explain again. The colleague was safe. They returned to work. The children were unharmed. There was confusion, yes, and fear, yes, and a need for clearer procedures, yes. But no harm.

You can feel the shape they want you to fit into: a guilty person. A person who admits fault so that the company can conclude the story cleanly. That is what hearings are often for, you realise. Not truth, but closure.

They offer you a break. You refuse, eager to finish, because the longer you stay in that virtual room, the smaller you feel.

Another month passes.

Then a phone call.

A voice tells you, briskly, that you are dismissed.

No clear reasons. No detailed explanation. Just the fall of a gate.

You are not allowed to apply to another department within the company again.

You try to ask practical questions, because practical questions are what desperate people cling to. What about references? What about your training? What about your studies to qualify as a practitioner, the path you have been working on with such effort?

The voice on the phone answers in a tone that feels almost bored by your panic.

“I don’t know what you are going to do.”

It is a strange sentence. It is not even cruel in a flamboyant way. It is worse than that. It is indifferent. It suggests that your future is not a matter of concern, not even as a human being.

You cry. You think of rent, of bills, of food. You think of your partner, of the plans you made together. You think of the way this country can make you feel welcome in daily life and as a consumer while making you precarious in law and as a worker.

An email follows: you have the right to appeal.

So, you begin again, this time not as an employee but as a person fighting for the right to be treated as one.

You research legislation and guidance for early years. You read late into the night, underlining phrases that sound like they were written by people who have never been in a room with twelve toddlers and a staffing ratio that is permanently stretched. You collect evidence, build a timeline, prepare your words like stones in your pockets.

This time, at least, you are told you may bring a legal representative or a colleague. The relief is immediate, then sour.

Unions will not take you on if you join in the middle of a grievance. It is policy, they say, as if policy is a weather system rather than a choice. A solicitor through a union is not available. Your options narrow again.

A colleague, then.

But you know what fear looks like in a workplace. You have watched it in the way people lower their voices when managers pass. You have heard it in the way staff laugh too quickly at jokes that are not funny. You understand that asking someone to stand beside you is not a small request. It is asking them to step out of the herd.

You consider going alone again.

Before the appeal, another small humiliation arrives. Your manager emails and asks you to collect your belongings from your locker but refuses to let you into the nursery. She offers to bring your things out to you like contraband. Like you are no longer to be trusted near the crayons and the little chairs.

You insist on collecting them yourself, at closing time, when fewer eyes are watching. They agree. You walk through the building that used to be your daily world, and it feels different now, not because the walls have changed, but because you have been reclassified. You are no longer staff. You are a risk.

You take your belongings. You leave again.

The appeal hearing is arranged with a manager based in England. This matters because early years regulation differs across nations. But the company proceeds as if the distinction is irrelevant, as if all places are the same once they are flattened into policy.

Still, there is no independent solicitor present in any hearing you attend. Only managers, moving through a process designed by their own employer, asking questions that will be interpreted by their own colleagues. It is not hard to imagine the biases. Self-preservation. Reputation. The desire to close a case quickly. The instinct to defend the company rather than understand the worker.

The manager begins with the same privacy rules. You must be alone. You must not tell anyone. Yet they also try to comfort you. They say they want to listen.

You want to believe them. You answer honestly.

They ask about your appeal, and then they ask a question that feels too naked for a workplace conversation.

“Why do you think you belong to a protected characteristics group?”

It is one thing to tick a box on a form. It is another to explain, aloud, to a stranger with corporate authority, why you are vulnerable. Why you are at risk. Why you have less room to recover.

You tell them about being a migrant. About how dismissal threatens not only income but stability, mental health, a relationship, a home. You speak of the cost of living, of the way everything feels more expensive when you are also paying in fear. You explain that people with visas often tolerate treatment others would challenge, because the price of challenging it can be exile.

They return, again, to the “serious safety incident.” You explain, again, that there were no injuries. That your colleague refused help. That you sought support. That the children were safe. That the situation contained confusion, not harm.

Finally, you ask for a resolution that sounds reasonable to any human being and dangerous to a corporation. You ask to work in another department. You offer to refresh first aid training and even pay for it out of your own pocket. You ask, in other words, to be allowed to continue being a person who works.

The meeting ends.

You wait.

A week later the manager requests another meeting, shorter this time. You agree, stomach tight, as if you are walking back into a room where you once lost something precious.

They ask, explicitly, “What is the difference between an Early Years Assistant and a Practitioner?”

You answer with the differences in responsibilities, the expectations, the boundaries. You mention, carefully, something you have carried for a long time: the consistent lack of professional staff meant you were often given responsibilities beyond your contract. A contract you never received in physical form to sign, a detail that feels absurd in retrospect, like being held to rules you were never properly given.

The manager nods. The meeting ends.

Another week. A final invitation. You are on holiday, out of the country, meant to be celebrating your birthday, meant to be reminding yourself that life is more than work. You take the call anyway because precarious work has a way of following you like a shadow, creeping into celebrations and monitoring your happiness.

The manager lists the reasons for the final decision. The key point is this: even though your colleague refused help, you should have insisted on administering first aid without their consent.

You hear the words and feel a coldness in your chest. You think of all the safeguarding training about bodily autonomy, about respecting children, about teaching them that they can say no. You think of how quickly “consent” becomes optional when the person being controlled is an employee rather than a child.

You also know something else now. Three days earlier, by post, you received information that an independent solicitor, hired by the local regulatory body for social work, investigated your case. Their report disagreed with the company’s outcome. They stated you had not done anything wrong.

You try to point this out. The decision does not change.

The manager keeps asking, “Do you understand?” in the tone of someone tightening a lid. You reply yes, because what else can you say? Understanding is not the same as agreeing, but they do not ask whether you agree.

The call ends.

An email follows: you will be paid until the end of the month. You may not apply again for similar roles within the company.

Later, with the solicitor’s letter in your hands, you realise that you were monitored without your permission for months. That you had been kept in procedural darkness while decisions formed around you like mould. That you had worked continuously for twenty-two months, more than any other colleague of yours at the company, and were close to the two-year threshold where additional statutory rights would have offered you more protection against unfair dismissal.

There is a particular cruelty in how systems treat migrants. Not always through dramatic hostility, but through quiet exploitation of what you do not know, what you cannot afford to risk, what you cannot easily contest. The system does not need to shout. It only needs to keep you unsure.

After four months you find another job. You tell yourself this is the end of the story, the part where you rebuild. You work hard. You stay polite. You arrive early. You even paid from your pocket to attend a two-day first-aid training course from the British Red Cross and confirmed with the instructor that you should never offer first-aid to an adult who is refusing it. You do what early years workers always do: you care, even when caring is not counted.

Three months later they tell you that you have not passed your probation.

It is presented as a simple decision, but you feel the familiar shape beneath it. Bias. Whisper networks. The way certain labels follow you. The way the story of your dismissal travels faster than your own account of it ever can. It’s a small city and a small world. After a dismissal, previous employers do not write references as neutral accounts of a worker’s performance. They portray the organisation as having acted correctly, while shifting responsibility and blame onto the individual worker. You need to remember: you are the problem, not them. A manager serves the interests of their own class, not those of a migrant worker.

The workplace feels competitive, a room where everyone is trying not to be the next person called into an office. People look at you as competition rather than colleague. Tension grows in the gaps between conversations. You feel yourself shrinking again.

You reach for union support, earlier this time, and learn, with a kind of exhausted disbelief, that most relevant unions do not accept early years assistants. The sector that deals in the earliest stage of human life, the work that claims to build the future, is treated as if it is not quite labour, not quite profession, not quite worthy of protection. At the time, the most powerful union in the sector took pride in having direct ties to the governing Party that aims to oust migrants.

And this is where the story stops being only yours.

Because what happened to you is not only about one safety incident, or one corporation, or one manager’s decisions. It is about an industry that calls itself caring while operating on thin margins and thinner staffing. It is about private profit moving through “innocent” spaces, shaping how risk is managed, how blame is assigned, how quickly a worker can be removed to protect a brand.

It is about secrecy clauses disguised as privacy. It is about hearings without independent oversight. It is about the way the language of safeguarding can be turned inside out until it becomes a tool of control.

It is also about the specific vulnerability of migrant workers in caring professions – people whose labour is welcomed, whose skills are needed, but whose presence is treated as conditional. You are praised for being resilient, then punished for not being endlessly pliable. You are expected to be grateful, then scolded when you ask for fairness.

And yet, if you strip the details down to their bones, almost anyone can recognise the shape of it. Most of us have felt the dread of being summoned by someone with power. Most of us have sat in a room, physical or virtual, where language was used to corner us rather than understand us. Most of us have watched a workplace demand silence as the price of continued employment.

The nursery is not separate from the world. It is not a bubble of innocence. It is a workplace, and therefore a political place, and therefore a place where the rules of the wider economy show their teeth. Or, as a mid-80s/early 90s underground synthpop band called themselves: “From Nursery to Misery.”

You think of the children on Graduation Day, their small hands holding certificates they cannot yet read, their faces lifted towards cameras taking pictures they have not yet learned to consent for, their futures imagined as bright and open. You think of the staff arranged beside them, smiling, trying to look like a stable foundation. You think of the photo you are missing from, the empty space where you should have stood.

The story is not only about being treated unfairly. It is about what that unfairness does. It teaches you to disappear. It teaches you to keep quiet. It teaches you to doubt your own memory, your own judgement, your own worth.

But it also teaches something else, if you let it.

It teaches you that care work is not soft work. It is labour under pressure, under surveillance, under constant assessment with ambiguous rules. It teaches you that workers in nurseries, especially migrant women, are often expected to absorb harm without leaving a mark. It teaches you that representation matters as a form of defence. When our stories are not told, silence becomes policy.

So, you tell it. Not because telling fixes what happened, and not because it guarantees justice, but because silence was part of the mechanism used against you. Because secrecy was treated as a condition of your survival. Because the workplace tried to make you feel alone, and you know now that “alone” is one of the most useful lies power ever tells.

And because somewhere, in another office, another worker is being called in for a three-minute conversation that will change everything – and they deserve to know that what they are feeling is not weakness. It is the body recognising a system that has done this before.

Isyerofa Ninnfuto is an educator and lifelong student. Since relocating to the UK in 2023, she has spent her days nurturing young minds while sharpening her own through craft, reflection, crocheting and knitting with an endless compassion for nonhuman animals, extending care beyond the human, and resisting exploitation in all its forms. Her life is expressed in multiple personal journals, crowded with cinematic field notes and political thinking, while drafting her books of spells – loaded with dream diaries, mysticism, and hard questions about power. This story is her first opening to the publishing world.