A THREE-year-old toddler walked out of a Cradley Heath school nursery unnoticed by staff to look for his mum and was found by a family friend wandering along the pavement of a busy road crying hysterically.

Mum Laura Cole said she felt “physically sick” when her friend rang her at work to say she had found Joey, who should have been in the after care club at Temple Meadow Primary School and Nursery.

“I felt sick – I was crying with the shock of it all.

“He could have been run over or snatched – you think the worse,” said 27-year-old Laura, a hairdresser, from Old Hill.

She works part-time and every Thursday Joey goes to the after school care provided at the school but last Thursday his name was not on the list.

Laura added: “He should have been on the list but he wasn’t and the person collecting the nursery children said they’d go get the primary children and if he was still there when they came back, they would take him.

“But he wasn’t and they assumed we’d picked him up.”

It is unclear how long Joey was out on his own but the nursery finishes at 3.15pm and he had walked out of the Clifton Street entrance, wandered along the narrow residential road, lined with parked cars and into the busy Station Road, before being spotted by the family friend at 3.40pm.

The friend took Joey to his home in Coombe Hill, where his father Jeff Wright, a 26-year-old upholsterer, was anxiously waiting.

Laura, who phoned the nursery immediately to tell them what had happened, said: “Joey was very upset when she found him.

“He was hysterical, saying he wanted his mummy. She managed to calm him but he was very upset when he saw his dad.”

“He said he’d gone to look for me because he thought I’d forgotten him. He got lots of hugs.”

Laura said the school had accepted full responsibility and re-assured her and Jeff that such an incident would never happen again as procedures had been tightened and extra staff put in place on the doors and, for the first time, on the gate from the nursery.

Laura said: “I am very happy with how they responded and I have no plans to remove him from the nursery which he started in April and is very happy there.”

Coincidentally the school’s performance was being judged this week by Ofsted inspectors as part of their regular checks on pupil progress and pastoral care.

Headteacher Cathy Walsh said a “thorough investigation” had been launched into the incident.

The school’s nursery and wrap-around care was run in partnership with SureStart under the name New Beginnings until earlier this month when it was announced it was no longer viable and the nursery has been taken over by Sandwell Council and renamed Flying Start.

Before and after school care has continued on the site for the nursery children but the older youngsters have to be transported to and from the Cradley Heath and Old Hill SureStart Children’s Centre.