Keeping Everyone Safe

Company Statement: Bright Horizons' response to the sentencing of Vincent Chan.

"This is a deeply distressing time for families and all those impacted by Vincent Chan’s horrific crimes and our thoughts remain first and foremost with them.

Keeping Everyone Safe is our most important responsibility. Vincent Chan broke that trust in the worst possible way - his actions were depraved, devious and go against the kindness and care our dedicated professionals provide to children each day.

His actions represent not only a violation of the victims, but also a profound betrayal of the trust placed in him by families and colleagues.

We are shocked and appalled that he was able to commit these horrific crimes and cannot begin to comprehend how upsetting it is for those involved and the wider community. We are profoundly sorry for the distress this has caused and are fully committed to take any learnings to improve our systems and processes.

While we appreciate that no length of sentence can undo what has happened, we support the outcome of these proceedings.

We fully support the Child Safeguarding Practice Review (CSPR) and hope that it will be beneficial for families, for us as a provider and for the Early Years industry as a whole. We are equally committed to understanding as much information as possible so that we and the wider industry can take the learning to improve systems and processes.

Our organisation’s mission is to protect and nurture young children. We employ over 8,500 experienced colleagues in our nurseries who work tirelessly and with dedication every day to look after the children in our care.

We have extensive safeguarding practices in place, designed to create safe environments for children to learn and grow. These include rigorous recruitment vetting and checking procedures. This individual had an enhanced DBS and was reference-checked.

Whilst this individual’s actions came to light after a colleague raised concerns and followed our internal whistle-blowing procedures to report him and we then shared our concerns externally, prompting the original Police investigation, we fully accept that the evidence shows the individual was able to commit these crimes despite our safeguarding measures. In light of this, we have commissioned an external expert in this field to undertake a full review of our safeguarding practices.

At Bright Horizons, the safety and wellbeing of children is at the heart of everything we do and our dedicated colleagues in nurseries continue to focus on the care and education of children each day."

Our Ongoing Commitment to Transparency

What happened at our former Finchley Road Nursery in North London was an appalling breach of trust by one individual and we acknowledge how devastating this is for the families affected. We are fully committed to taking learning from this case.

We know this case has understandably raised many questions among families and in the media. While we may not have every answer right now, we will continue to share and update information relating to our actions and the most common questions to provide clarity and reassurance where we can.

Safeguarding is a fundamental focus and responsibility at Bright Horizons and central to the trust placed in us by families, employer partners, and communities worldwide. We have taken decisive, measurable steps to strengthen our global safeguarding framework.

Our current work is focused on five core areas:

• Deepening and expanding training to strengthen knowledge, skills, and consistency across teams.
• Reinforcing leadership accountability by ensuring training is embedded through strong oversight, mentoring, and real-time feedback to support day-to-day application.
• Engaging independent external experts to provide objective input and oversight.
• Expanding classroom cameras and classroom controls.
• Reinforcing transparency and continuous improvement.

Leadership Accountability and Oversight

Safeguarding is our core responsibility. Ensuring that every team member clearly understands their role in protecting the safety and well-being of the children in our care remains essential, with increased emphasis on leadership accountability and daily operational excellence.

We have activated a global safeguarding group comprised of leaders from across the organisation. They are accountable for delivering the actions needed to strengthen the work we do every day to ensure the safety of children, families, and employees across every location and geography where we operate.

This senior group has enhanced the frequency and rigor of nursery visits to provide additional coaching, support, and visibility and regularly reports our progress to our CEO and Board of Directors.

Independent Expertise, Risk Assessment and Oversight

To ensure our safeguarding approach reflects best standards and benefits from independent input, Bright Horizons has engaged respected third-party experts to provide independent review, surface risk proactively, and inform continuous improvement.

We have engaged Praesidium, a recognised leader in child abuse prevention and risk management with more than 30 years of experience. They will conduct a comprehensive independent global risk assessment. This will include a review of:

• Governance structures and policies
• Hiring and onboarding practices
• Training programmes
• Incident response protocols
• Day-to-day operational safeguards

Training and Safeguarding

Since we first became aware of the charges, we have expanded training efforts, and taken positive action to ensure our safeguarding practices are robustly and consistently embedded in all our nurseries.

Staff are undergoing regular safeguarding training to reinforce and enhance existing training programmes.

In addition, we have:

• Relaunched mandated reporting training across all nursery teams to ensure clarity, confidence, and consistency in recognising and escalating concerns.
• Conducted a series of meetings, discussions, conferences, and town halls with senior managers, regional and nursery leadership and back-up care team leads, to reinforce our safeguarding culture.
• Created a dedicated senior team to lead on our organisational approach and reinforce how our policies and procedures are fully embedded in our nurseries and culture.
• Enhanced communication from senior leaders to ensure nursery teams are embedding our safeguarding practices effectively during their leadership visits.
• Brought forward the timing of many of our internal safeguarding audits and regular refresher training on safeguarding practices so that our colleagues have reassurance that they are implementing procedures correctly.

How Are Digital Devices Used Within Our Nurseries?

iPads and Tablets

We are strengthening classroom technology controls and have deployed additional safety features on classroom iPads and tablets to limit access to only approved content and to prevent misuse.

Phones and Smart Watches:

Colleagues are required to ‘check in’ their mobile phones and smart watches before entering nursery rooms. Colleagues are allowed to use their devices during their breaks in staff areas but no phones or smart watches are allowed in children’s rooms.

Classroom Cameras:

Our objective is to introduce cameras in nurseries in a way that enhances child safety, protects privacy, and provides an additional layer of reassurance to families, employer partners, and our staff.

After reviewing our approach, we will begin introducing cameras in areas of some of our nurseries as part of ongoing developments to our safeguarding practice. Cameras will never replace skilled staff, but expanding classroom cameras in nurseries is an important safeguarding priority for the year.

This won’t be a onesizefitsall decision. Any use of cameras will be tailored to each nursery and guided by parental feedback, expert advice, privacy rights, and other relevant considerations.

We are partnering with best-in-class vendors and have established standards to ensure responsible use coupled with strong privacy and cybersecurity safeguards.

In Quarter One, we have:

• Initiated in-field testing in the US of camera systems with trusted vendors to evaluate functionality, reliability, and performance in active classroom environments.
• Developed a phased rollout strategy for camera implementation that addresses physical facility needs, operational and infrastructure readiness, and communications planning, ensuring a measured and responsible introduction of cameras where they are not already in place.

Keeping Everyone Safe: In Nursery

Our nursery colleagues are trained and required to put children’s welfare first. They receive regular safeguarding training and ongoing support to ensure they are always up to date with best practice and have individual training records of all internal and external training undertaken.

We have further procedures that detail safeguarding and child protection, including:

• How to respond to concerns or suspected abuse
• What to do if a child makes a disclosure
• Procedures for monitoring attendance and unexplained injuries
• Managing allegations and reporting concerns
• Safe colleague deployment and supervision
• Use of mobile phones, cameras, and digital devices
• Welcoming and ID checking visitors

Colleagues are also trained and instructed on:

• Respectful Relationships  All colleagues, parents, contractors, and visitors are expected to follow our respectful interactions procedure to support positive interactions with children at all times.
• Working Together  We work in partnership with parents, carers, children, and external agencies. We encourage everyone to speak up if they have any concerns, and we respond quickly and appropriately to any issues raised.
• Confidentiality and Information Sharing Bright Horizons are committed to safeguarding children, and we handle all information about children and families with care. Requests for child protection information from/on behalf of external authorities/agencies (such as Children’s Services, the Police, and other childcare providers such as schools and nurseries) will be shared, if there is a lawful basis to do so under child protection law.
• Regular Review and Improvement  Our safeguarding Policies and Procedures are reviewed regularly and updated if there are changes to the law, regulatory requirements and/or lessons learned from practice.
• Ways to escalate concerns Colleagues have increased confidence to raise these quickly and confidentially through our personal accountability campaign, ‘Sense Something, Say Something’.

Keeping Everyone Safe - Our Recruitment Processes

We recognise that safeguarding begins from the moment a candidate indicates an interest in working for us. As such, we have robust Safer Recruitment procedures which comply with relevant regulations.

If we are satisfied that the candidate is suitable to join our team, we then have a robust induction and training process to ensure colleagues have the knowledge and skills required to perform their role.

Thereafter, we have procedures which ensure ongoing safer employment, which are designed to make sure colleagues continue to meet our required standards and keep up to date on relevant changes and developments to our internal policies and procedures.

Further relevant information is below:

• Safety is at the heart of what we do. Our colleagues are well trained and often have decades of experience.
• Every nursery candidate goes through a two-stage interview, including an in-person supervised assessment in the nursery to check their experience, values, and suitability for working with children.
• Comprehensive background checks include enhanced DBS checks, overseas criminal checks where needed, and verifications of references from previous employers are also completed.
• We review any gaps in employment history, confirm qualifications, and complete health questionnaires to ensure candidates can provide safe, high-quality care.
• Our dedicated onboarding team follows strict safeguarding standards, and ensures colleagues are safe and suitable before they start work in our nurseries.

In relation to the individual involved in this incident:

• Their previous references were suitable and did not raise any concerns that would indicate they were unsafe to work with children.
• We ensured that they held a suitable enhanced-DBS and that they had completed a Barred List Check, (this Enhanced DBS check was repeated during the course of their employment in line with best practice).
• There were no gaps in their employment history.