Nursery Scandals: What Went Wrong? is a new BBC One documentary raising serious questions about how a nursery with a good Ofsted rating was responsible for the death of toddler Noah Sibanda.
A nursery worker killed 14-month-old Noah on December 9, 2022, at the now-closed Fairytales Day Nursery in Dudley, West Midlands.
Kimberley Cookson subjected him to “dangerous” and “restrictive sleeping practices”. While his death led to a landmark sentencing in April 2026 for those responsible, this isn’t enough insists investigative journalist Hayley Hassall.
In the BBC One documentary, Hayley Hassall investigates problems in early years care.
***Warning: contains upsetting descriptions of Noah Sibanda’s death***
Death of Noah Sibanda in Fairytales Day Nursery
Following the death of toddler Noah Sibanda at a ‘good’ rated nursery, Hayley Hassall investigates problems in early years care.
In the BBC One documentary Nursery Scandals: What Went Wrong? she focuses on three cases that had devastating consequences. Hayley also hears from the parents of young children let down by safeguarding errors – as well as the whistleblowers who tried to prevent them. This comes amid a “rise in serious childcare incidents”.
Noah Sibanda was a “kind, gentle, and patient boy” who attended Fairytales Day Nursery in Dudley, a childcare service which had been running for 20 years. Oftsed had awarded it good and outstanding reports.
However, unbeknownst to Noah’s mum Masi Sibanda, one nursery worker would do anything to get the children to sleep. And on December 9, 2022, her cruel actions resulted in Noah’s death.
Kimberley Cookson said Noah had gone to sleep. She found him unresponsive two hours later, and the CCTV at the nursery contradicted her story.
What caused Noah Sibanda’s death?
The footage of Kimberley Cookson putting Noah down to sleep is “too distressing to broadcast in full”. But viewers will see Kimberley putting Noah down in a teepee face down, wrapped tightly in a sleeping blanket. She handles him roughly, puts a blanket over his head, and even sits on him to keep him still.
Kimberley suffocated Noah as she tried to make him fall asleep. Historic CCTV revealed that Noah wasn’t the only child treated roughly. Kimberley regularly placed babies face down to sleep. The National Institute of Health advises against placing babies to sleep face down. Sleeping face-down can cause babies to breathe in their own exhaled air (rebreathing), leading to a dangerous buildup of carbon dioxide and a lack of oxygen.
Shockingly, Kimberley later stated she had never been taught how to put a child down to sleep. Authorities accused the nursery of “a lack of training” and a “culture of pressure and fear”.
‘The staff did not see the children as humans’
Noah Sibanda’s mum Misa describes the moment she was told about his death. In the BBC One documentary Nursery Scandals: What Went Wrong?, Misa remembers her husband receiving a phone call from the nursery saying that Noah wasn’t breathing.
Arriving at the hospital, she was stunned to hear a member of staff tell her: “There’s nothing more we can do.”
She describes seeing the staff giving him CPR. She says: “Because of how long he’d been gone, he’d started to look different. I should have stayed with him longer. I should have held him more. But I was also in this strange place of ‘this isn’t Noah, this isn’t real’. His body was stiff.”
She later adds: “The staff did not see Noah and those children as humans. They weren’t seen as children. I do feel they were being treated like inanimate objects. They didn’t treat them as living, delicate beings.”
Noah Sibanda death: Where is Kimberley Cookson now?
Fairytales Day Nursery, its boss Deborah Latewood, and worker Kimberley Cookson were all sentenced over the death of 14-month-old Noah Sibbanda.
The judge sentenced nursery worker Kimberley Cookson, 23 at the time, to three years and four months in prison. She pled guilty to gross negligence manslaughter.
The judge handed nursery owner Deborah Latewood, then 55, a suspended sentence of six months in prison for a health and safety offence. The nursery was fined £240,000 for corporate manslaughter and a health and safety offence. It was also ordered to pay £56,000 in costs. She was also disqualified from being a director for seven years.
During a two-day sentencing, CCTV played to the court showed Noah “struggling and thrashing” at the now-closed Bourne Street site. At the time, he was face down on a soft cushion inside a teepee in the nursery’s baby room.
Cookson wrapped the toddler tightly in blankets and placed her leg across his lower back for seven minutes, Wolverhampton Crown Court heard.
Believing he had fallen asleep, the nursery worker then left him alone, but staff did not physically check on him for about two hours. She found him unresponsive and doctors pronounced dead in hospital an hour later.
Noah Sibanda’s death ‘will haunt me for the rest of my life’
In a statement read to the court, Kimberley described how “what happened will haunt me for the rest of my life”.
“I cannot imagine the pain the family is going through,” she said. “I only hope that one day they hold it in their hearts to forgive me.”
Meanwhile, police charged Deborah Latewood because “it wasn’t an isolated incident”. In a letter to the judge, nursery manager Deborah Latewood apologised to Noah’s family and described him as a “beautiful, happy, loveable child”.
She said: “I will always send love and wishes to the family of Noah and can never be sorry enough. I thought after 40 years in my trade I had made a difference. This was not the difference I wanted”.