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A Care Standards Tribunal has heard how a childminder who offered to give a lift to a three-year-old girl forgot she was in the back of her car and left her strapped in for five hours while she was at work.

Carol Cort, 67, ran the nursery school attended by the child and on 18 February 2013, she had offered to take her on her way to work.

However, when she arrived at the nursery school, Mrs Cort forgot the little girl was in the back of her car and simply went into work at the Barn Nursery School in Bourton-on-the-Water, Gloucestershire.

The Daily Mail reports that when she returned to her car at the end of the working day and found the child strapped in, she thought another member of staff had just placed her there for the return journey home.

Speaking at the Care Standards Tribunal, Judge Meleri Tudur said:

“Initially, she didn’t realise what had happened, assuming the child had been placed in the wrong vehicle by a member of staff.

“Only when the child told her she had been forgotten did she realise she had been there all day.”

After realising that the girl – referred to as “E” – had been in the car for five hours without food, water or toileting, Mrs Cort drove her straight home to her parents and confessed what had happened in a “very distressed” state.

The Tribunal heard that Mrs Cort had worked in childcare for 46 years and had an unblemished record.

When she confronted the child’s mother, it is reported that she wept and confessed, “I have done something awful. I’ve ruined the nursery and let everybody down.”

The Tribunal heard that staff at the Barn Nursery School had not noticed the child was absent because she had been away from the school the previous week as a result of chickenpox.

Her mother said that when she had telephoned the nursery school at the end of the day and a member of staff had said he had not seen E, she had assumed he was joking.

The parents of the girl decided to report the incident to the Local Authority after declining a free place at the nursery school. The girl’s parents decided to withdraw her from the nursery school instead.

Ofsted immediately suspended Mrs Cort – who was due to hand the running of the school over to her daughter.

The Tribunal heard, however, that Mrs Cort was under strain over concerns about her mother’s care in a nursing home. She presented evidence to the tribunal that she was suffering from depression at the time the incident occurred.

Other parents with child attending the nursery school gave “glowing” reports of Mrs Cort and her lawyers told the Tribunal that since the incident, a rigorous system of checking vehicles in the nursery’s car park had been put in place.

Judge Tudur said, however, that the circumstances of the incident were so grave that there was no option but for Mrs Cort to be struck off the childminders’ register – adding that it was only by “good luck and chance” that the child had not come to any harm.

The judge said that although Mrs Cort informed the child’s mother immediately of what had happened, she had not told her own family or reported the incident to Ofsted.

The judge also expressed serious concerns about the fact that the child’s name had been absent from the school register on the day of the incident.

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