Following currently being offered breakfast, personnel at the nursery began “free flow”.
Just following 9.30am, Tiya was discovered lying unconscious. She died the following day at St George’s Hospital in Tooting, the inquest heard.
Prashant Popat representing Tiya’s mother and father, said: “No adult in that nursery noticed Tiya take jelly from the table.
“No grownup saw or heard Tiya put jelly in her mouth. No grownup saw or heard Tiya choke.
“If she coughed or struggled for breath or created noises, she was not noticed or heard.
“No grownup noticed or heard Tiya fall to the ground.
“If young children have to be supervised at all occasions do you truly think that there was ample supervision?”
Mr Hayes replied: “I wasn’t there, I do not know who was in the area.
“I blame the jelly.
“I truly feel the problem wasn’t about supervision, this was about an instantaneous point.
“Jelly was out and we didn’t know it could lead to immediate asphyxiation.”
Mr Hayes, operations manager at the nursery, “deliberately missed” the incident in his formal report to Ofsted and supplied inaccurate data about how many staff have been on duty, it was claimed.
The nursery boss then suspended an assistant even although she had accomplished “nothing” to deserve it, to attempt and appease the inspectors and hold the nursery open, the inquest heard.
In a report to the regional authority the day right after the tragedy he wrote that 3 personnel had been stationed during the rooms when only two had been present and no-one particular was supervising Tiya.
“On the allocation sheet at the time of the incident there have been two employees which is not what you have written,” coroner Dr Fiona Wilcox advised Mr Hayes.
“At the time Tiya was discovered there might have been no staff.
“There is nothing to indicate that when this youngster was identified there could not have been any members of staff.”
Mr Hayes replied that he “panicked” and “didn’t know what data to put”.
“It’s what I put down with very good intentions,” he explained.
“Looking at this it could seem that you are attempting to minimise the circumstances,” Dr Wilcox mentioned.
Ofsted ordered that the nursery should be closed for six weeks right after the incident.
But Mr Hayes wrote to the authority with a set of self-imposed regulations and it was allowed to reopen soon after just two weeks.
“We had to give emergency child care to all our parents,” he stated.
“If it had been closed for six weeks all of our mother and father would have been devastated.
“The households would have discovered somewhere else, they relied on us.”
The problems included that Dicky Birds would not use jelly in perform or on the menu and totally free flow sessions would be stopped.
The nursery also promised to suspend the workers right concerned in the incident but only assistant Natasha Collins was suspended.
Mr Hayes: “We had to pick someone so I picked Natasha.
“She had cold sores all about her mouth, she was truly distressed and truly unwell.
“She had yearly depart so I made a decision to meet the criteria and picked Natasha.”
He added: “I had to suspend someone so I picked Natasha, I could have suspended plenty of men and women.”
Miss Collins had been assigned to the art area, which adjourned the area in which the jelly table was, at the time of the incident.
She was drawing with a group of young children and had a constrained view of Tiya from exactly where she was, the inquest heard.
Mr Hayes admitted that she had completed “nothing” to deserve becoming suspended but claimed he “did it sweetly”.
“My priority was to reopen the nursery,” he mentioned.
“If I had applied any type of logic to it I would have had to suspend half of the nursery.”
Dr Wilcox accused Mr Hayes of producing a scapegoat out of Miss Collins and stated: “To the jury this may possibly appear as a bit of a management stitch-up.”
The inquest continues.
"I blame the jelly" says manager of nursery where toddler choked to death
