Dr Judy Whitmarsh, a lecturer in Early Childhood Studies at the University of Wolverhampton, visited five children's centres and three private nurseries and interviewed 75 members of staff last autumn to find out views on dummy use.
Since then the Department of Health with the Foundation for Study in Infant Deaths has published new advice to parents recommending that babies be put to bed with dummies to prevent cot death (News, 5 July).
Dr Whitmarsh told Nursery World, 'What I found is that no managers or practitioners had based their views on research, but their own experience, observations, or what they had heard. All the nurseries and children's centres had some strategies to reduce dummy use but they also felt that they had to do what parents wanted.'
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