Guest Posted April 9, 2008 Share Posted April 9, 2008 Hi everyone With the fast changes taking place in early years (funding entitlement to 15hrs etc, lunch clubs etc) I want to survey parents (present and future) about what their childcare needs actually are. We currently are sessional pre school (2.5hr sessions 7 times a week no lunch club), but having to think long and hard about ways to offer more flexibility in the future to remain viable. Any pro formas or ideas of what to ask parents in order for us to gain a full picture of what they really need/want without them jumping to conclusions. Know I can trust you all to come up with something. Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beau Posted April 10, 2008 Share Posted April 10, 2008 I guess a starting point would be to list all the possible options available and put them into a table of 'Would you take advantage of these services - yes/no'. If you have a range of ages perhaps you also need to split it for this as well. Also give an idea of cost or ask how much they would be prepared to pay if this is an extra service you would be providing. Make sure you are clear on what the options actually mean - many new parents may not understand what a 'lunch club' is for example. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inge Posted April 10, 2008 Share Posted April 10, 2008 we did as beau suggested, a list of yes no questions, suggestions and cost involved.. would they use a lunch club ? we included a brief explanation of lunch club and how it would work.. including things like providing the food, ice packs hours etc.. some thought we would provide food and took some explaining that they were paying for the childcare not the food element of the lunch club. willing to pay? we gave a costing for this so they were aware of how much it would actually cost them. would like longer hours? are current session times suitable? how would they like them to change? how do they see this happening? would you pay for extra hours and how much? or would they just use the funded hours differently? (some may opt to have no more hours but have 1 full day and 3 half . so income remains the same for being open longer, hence may not be financially viable) Make it very clear in the opening sentence that this is a consultation , and may take a while to implement it would not happen next week. (some were so eager they could not wait the 3 weeks it took us to add lunch club, and had we been able to go full day we would have been swamped.) we did not ask for parents to identify themselves unless they wanted to. Must have been more but i did try to keep it to one page and we had about a 50% return rate. Inge Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted April 10, 2008 Share Posted April 10, 2008 Thanks - that's give me some ideas, has anyone got a copy of letter/pro forma you could attach/link me to, just as a starting place. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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