A childminder who took on far more children than allowed, leaving some unsupervised in her garden and others strapped into pushchairs upstairs, has been jailed for two years.

Amanda Mathewson, 55, of Dunfermline, Fife, admitted wilfully neglecting, abandoning and exposing children in her care at Kirkcaldy Sheriff Court in October. She was sentenced on Friday 6 November by Sheriff John MacRitchie.

As a registered childminder she could look after at most eight children under 12, including no more than three under primary school age and one under one. On 26 August 2024 she had 27 children in her care: 15 under 12, 10 under primary school age and two under one. The offences ran from 7 September 2023 to 26 August 2024, at several addresses in Dunfermline, involving more than 50 children from over 40 families.

Parents discovered the neglect

Her offending came to light after parents grew suspicious that their sons, aged three and one, were not with her on school runs. At her home they found five school-age children waiting in the garden, the front door unlocked, and a toddler crying beneath the kitchen table. Upstairs, very young children were strapped into pushchairs. Doorbell footage showed children left alone twice that day, for at least 30 minutes the second time.

Sheriff MacRitchie called it a sustained course of deliberate and grossly reckless behaviour, and a gross abuse of the trust her role gave her. He said she had knowingly created conditions in which injury, terror and neglect were obvious and foreseeable. More than 90 pages of victim impact statements described nightmares, separation anxiety and lasting distrust of childcare. Mathewson, who had worked in childcare for about 30 years with no previous convictions, had resigned her registration.