[2025] UKUT 029 (AAC)

The appellant produced a witness statement for the purpose of this hearing. She confirmed the truth of that statement on affirmation and was questioned by Mr Lewis for DBS and also by the Tribunal. We do not attempt to set out all of her evidence here, although we have taken full account of it.

In her witness statement, the appellant gave a detailed account of the hair incident with Child A. She stated that Child A had continued pulling her hair despite being asked to stop three times because he was hurting her, but he continued to pull her hair. She then said that: “I gently touched the back of his head to illustrate what it would feel like if someone touched his hair, without pulling or causing discomfort. At no point did I actually pull [Child A’s] hair”.

She described how Child A had then, in effect, falsely accused her. She said that during the meeting on 14 June 2023 (prior to being suspended) she had “demonstrated my actions to show that I had not yanked, pulled, or inflicted any harm on the child”.

She included several paragraphs in her witness statement detailing what she considered to be poor practice on the part of the pre-school and other staff at the pre-school and arguing that the pre-school’s treatment of her was unfair in comparison. She argued that the statements of MN, LBD and LC were evidence of staff being upset by her having raised concerns about poor practice at the pre-school and suggested that this may be why witnesses had turned against her.

She also stated that she now accepted that there was no CCTV coverage of the area where the hair incident took place.

She also gave further evidence about her good employment record.

In oral evidence, she clarified that her experience in education was really four years spread over six years with gaps and that her previous work as a teaching assistant had been mostly with older children so that she had only just over a year of experience in early years in total.

Mr Lewis put to the appellant that although the statements were anonymous it was actually clear to her who each person was. She agreed that she was able to identify the witnesses and agreed with counsel as to the names of the authors of each of the eight anonymous witness statements.

When specific parts of the witness statements were put to her, she broadly agreed with what each witness had said, even where that conflicted with the representations she had made to DBS or what she had put in her witness statement. Thus, she accepted that she had said to MN that she was frustrated with the children’s behaviour and that her conversation with MN had gone broadly as MN described, although in her representations to DBS the appellant had said that she did not recall this conversation.

The appellant accepted LBD’s statement as being broadly accurate although in her representations she had described this as “heavily embellished”. She did not accept that she had said to LBD anything about there being no consequences for the children or that the children were ‘feral’.

She said that the meeting with LBD and LC was more a discussion about policy, that LC was fine with the way she had handled everything and at the end of the meeting “everything was fine and all sorted”, although in her representations to DBS she had said that it was her intention to raise the setting’s behaviour policy for discussion later as a staff team, suggesting that at the time she had not thought “everything was fine and all sorted” but, rather, that there was a problem with the school’s behaviour policy that needed addressing.

The appellant accepted that the setting’s policy was that physical intervention was not to be used unless necessary to prevent injury to self or others.

The appellant agreed that Child A was very shy, but that he became more outgoing with her.

She accepted that when Child A was tugging her hair that it hurt, that she tried to persuade him to stop and that this was the type of thing she had been frustrated about earlier in the day, i.e. children not stopping and there being no consequences. She insisted that she merely touched his hair and insisted that she would never intentionally harm a child. She denied losing her patience or taking the child’s hat off. She denied having poor problem-solving, coping and empathy skills.

She could not comment on what MN and AL had or had not been able to see or hear or what Child A had said to them afterwards. She agreed that the blue form obtained by MN was an injury form.

She accepted, as she had in her witness statement, but as she had denied in her representations, that in the conversation with EB she had demonstrated what she had done with Child A’s hair, albeit that she disagreed with the way that EB and LC described this in their statements, emphasising again that all she did was to gently touch Child A’s hair.

Although in her representations she had denied speaking to KN, in oral evidence the appellant accepted that she had and that she had said she had “fucked up big time”. She explained her reaction to us saying: “there was a lot going on then, I was thinking of my home situation, my financial situation, there was a lot of emotions going on in that kitchen”. She denied saying that she had pulled Child A’s hair, reiterating that she had just touched his hair.

It was suggested to the appellant that her email of 14 June was more consistent with her having pulled Child A’s hair than just touched it. She did not accept this. She said that she was not denying that the incident happened, but there was no harm done to the child.

She said she did not attend the disciplinary meeting because she was advised not to.

She said that she now works as a receptionist in a medical practice and has been in that job for about three months. This was the first job she had had since her dismissal by the pre-school. There had been a period she could not work because of a back operation.

When asked by Mr Lewis, the appellant said that she did not think she had done anything wrong. She had just touched Child A’s hair and she had apologised for it immediately. She said that maybe “use of profanity was not the best way to express it” and that she “should have taken adequate time to calm down” but she “did not harm an individual and … never would, so the process of how things was handled was not fair or just”.