Nurseries 'need to have firmer guidance' on using dummies

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.'

She said she was concerned about how managers and practitioners would implement the advice.

'The guidelines are advisory - will managers ignore them, or will they begin to produce a policy to support dummies at sleep time from one month to 12 months, then take on board weaning babies from dummies at one year? Why not inform parents, have weaning parties, or offer help and strategies to parents?'

This meant that they struggled to reduce dummies by mainly indirect means, such as saying, "He hasn't had his dummy today, isn't that good". They used a range of strategies, from just asking a child to remove a dummy when talking, to more organised routines.'

Of those interviewed, only three practitioners and one manager, when asked about the possible benefits of dummies mentioned an association with protection against cot death. All of those interviewed had different ideas about the age at which dummies should be stopped or when they became harmful.