New 'Critics' Website for Care Settings
Ken McArthur
Thursday, March 1, 2012
The launch of a new website called ‘The Good Care Guide’ fills me as an owner of a single stand along nursery in the heart of a small local community, with trepidation. I have used websites such as Trip Adviser and Holiday Watchdog in the past when it comes to researching my next holiday or when I’m looking for a hotel in a city I’ve not been to before. But as an experienced traveller I take most of the reports I read, both good and bad, with a very large spoonful of scepticism. Personally, I have a tendency to discount the very bad as well as the very good, because somewhere between the two is the truth. My concern about this new website is - will those that use it have the same level of scepticism as I do when it comes to some of the comments and opinions of contributors. My second concern is who is going to ‘police’ the site? Is it going to be the job of those that set the site up to ‘vet’ the comments and opinions or is it going to be left to the early years setting themselves to monitor the website looking for defamatory or unsubstantiated allegations? Or will it descend into the situation that website like Trip Advisor is finding itself, where there are allegations that some hotels are ‘bribing’ customer with freebies just to get them post a glowing account. I can only hope that if this website does take-off parents are sensible enough to realise that in many cases those that are making comments do so for a reason and that reason may need to be questioned. Call me cynical but I could register by nursery on this website, it will cost me £60 to do so – I wonder what advantage I will have if I register or is by registering the only way a setting will have a ‘right of reply’? On a final note, the people behind this site claim it was born out of their own problems of finding independent opinions on early years settings – my advise to parents has always been, firstly, look at the settings Ofsted report and secondly, go to the primary school gate around 3.00 to 3.20 and ask parents directly what they though of their local early years setting – I think parents will get a truer and more balance view from these people than they will get from those that make unattributable comments on websites.
