Are We Sessional Or Full?

[Guest]

please bear with me this may take some explaining

 

At the moment we are open 8am-6pm for children aged 3mths - 5 and fully flexible parents can book anything from 2 1/2 to 10 hours a day, we just take off the eyf for funded children and charge a flat hourly rate for the rest

With all the changes that we've had to undertake we've cut our opening hours and this seems to have opened a can of worms so i thought i'd ask the experts

 

we will be open from 9 am til 3.15 pm parents can book in for the full day (we have 3 children in September in from 9 - 3.15 = 6 1/4 hours) children are 2-5

our session times are 9 - 11.30 or 12.45 - 3.15 parents can choose just to have the 2.5 hour session or add a one hour lunch club (9-12.30 or 11.45 - 3.15) so far we have about 6 children booked in for the lunch club either added to a morning or afternoon session plus the 3 staying all day. We can take 20 children at any one time so we still have room for more if needed and when the 3 hour session comes in we're already there.

 

because we are offering the full day (at the request of the parents who we are supposed to be there for in the first place ) we have had to stay registered with OFSTED as full day care (and pay the higher fee) but our development worker is adamant we are not offering full daycare as the session with lunch is only 3.5 hours long

i can't fit 2 x 4 hour sessions into 6 1/4 hours no matter how hard i try and the committee can't / won't budge on the opening times

 

any ideas?

what are we offering?

i am stuck inside the box and can't seem to think my way outside it

 

thanks for anything anyone has to to offer

Edited July 16, 2008 by Guest

[hali]

i think (and im sure i will be corrected if wrong) unless you offer a 4 hr session or longer you are not full day care!!!...

[Guest Wolfie]

Well I think you ARE full day care because you've got some children staying for 6+ hours!!

[Inge]

You are offering full day care .

The difference is that to be sessional you MUST have a period with NO CHILDREN in your care..

this is usually a minimum of 15 mins to allow for late collection of children from morning session... but can be less ..

 

we are sessional about to try for full day and are currently open 9.15-11.45 lunch club 11.45 12.15 and 12.30 to 3pm at present... 15mins with no children....If a parent wants 2 sessions in a day at teh moment they have to collect at 12.15 andf bring child back at 12.30!! hence our decision to try to change.. but until EYFS we were unable to as we had no seperate toilet.. but now not an obstacle as it is no longer a MUST.

 

Inge

[Lou]

You are full day care as you are offering parents 6+ hours if required. We have just changed from sessional to full day care, not got the bill yet.

[narnia]

definately full day care

[Guest]

Thank you Thank you Thank you and so quickly too you are stars!!!!

 

Hali thats what our dev worker said (and what i was worried would be the case )

wolfie thats what i said because were do have children in all day

Inge thats what i needed someone to say!!!!

and Lou and Narnia Thanks to you too!!

 

i told our chairperson today that i would ask here tonight then armed with the right things to say ring ofsted in the am to check then have an answer for them tomorrow at the committee meeting

Edited July 16, 2008 by Guest

[Guest]

I used to do the same flxible hours as you have described, I had to register as full day care due to the children who attended am + lunch + pm sessions. In the old days we were dscribed as Extended hours provision compared to either sessional or full day in terms of 8am-6pm hrs. Unfortunately the provision of extended hours, ie: some children attending more than 4 hrs but less than a 'full 10 hr day' has never been recognised when it coms to filling out statistic forms for LEA or when registration 'status' has needed to be defined.

I personally think that the registration fee should take account of a setting which provides more than sessional but less than full day hours. (ie a bit more than the sessional registration and a bit less than the full day care registration cost)

 

Good luck with your new hours, I am sure the parents will appreciate that you have extended your provision to meet their needs.

 

Peggy

[Guest]

Inge we are in the same boat as you but this will change come sept as everyone will be providers and judged as such. we too have no seperate loo but in the new guidence this says that all settings need seperate loos . Our advisor said this will be so and to put a portaloo in our already miniscule play area,we thought we would be able to have it as a tardis for role play and hang the sun canopy from it. However our friendly head teacher from our lovely school got us a grant for absolutely brill new loos that are age appropriate and we have only waited 14yrs for, they are to be fitted next week in time for EYFS DDay.Can anyone see that I have a sad life when this makes me happy.

 

back to original post if you have even 1 child in over 4hrs you are full day care and will have to pay the full day care reg fee but as you are reg for this you are not breaching any rules but would be if you where sessional. but this will not matter come sept as then there will be 2 registers with seperate fees both of which we will have to pay as we have children in pre-school and after school clubs. but that would be a whole new post to talk about that.

sue

[Deb]

Am I right in thinking that as from September, with the new childcare registers etc, there will no longer be such a thing as sessional day care anyway? Obviously there will still be some division in the fee.

 

We are currently waiting for Ofsted to approve our variation order as we want to increase our session by 15 minutes which would take us over the 4 hours. We have sent them an action plan showing how we will continue to meet the 'national standards'.

 

Ofsted still do not know what the registration costs will be for September, impressive! How are we supposed to be able to budget?

[hali]

so from sept if you can only run a 2 1/2 sesion are you not classed as daycare?

[Inge]

Inge we are in the same boat as you but this will change come sept as everyone will be providers and judged as such. we too have no seperate loo but in the new guidence this says that all settings need seperate loos . Our advisor said this will be so and to put a portaloo in our already miniscule play area,we thought we would be able to have it as a tardis for role play and hang the sun canopy from it. However our friendly head teacher from our lovely school got us a grant for absolutely brill new loos that are age appropriate and we have only waited 14yrs for, they are to be fitted next week in time for EYFS DDay.Can anyone see that I have a sad life when this makes me happy.

 

sue

 

It does not state MUST have, it is one of those 'guidance with which we should have regard' to have a separate loo.. otherwise lots of place like ours would close.. no chance what so ever of adding any in our hired hall.. there are lots of settings out there in this situation.. We have checked with our advisor when asking for the change in hours etc and it does actually say 'should normally have one' but not that you MUST have one..

 

Inge

[Inge]

forgot to say our registration certificate sent a while ago for new register still says sessional care so it must still be there.. just depends on what hours you have agreed to open with Ofsted, standards may be the same but the title is still out there..

Hali would check your latest registration cert. to see what it says. we all the follow same rules but as to the hours this may depend on the 'title'..

Isn't the plan for all to pay the same fee.. which was a horrendance increase of some ridiculous amount for sessional settings.. which has now been 'shelved' for the time being anyway..

 

Inge

[Guest]

inge i also said that to our advisor and that if we showed that we where able to run just the same with a risk assesment etc we should be able to get away with it because of how it was worded and as you can see from their answer they thought we wouldnt. It didnt matter anyway because we could not afford to change this so like you we would have sunk or swam by what the interpritation of an individual ofsted inspector would say. I agree that there are lots of settings in the same boat so surely there would be some way around this. anyway the school community room we run from was able to apply for a grant somthing about school and community and we got it. so we are very lucky.

 

will any of you sessional care change to longer sessions/fullday in september?

sue

[Inge]

using the same criteria..

it would mean we would have to ensure we do everything in the 'guidance to which we have regard ' areas as well as the MUSTs therefore making the whole document wording meaningless. we did check and have been told it is Ok so long as we can justifiably say and explain why...

 

Inge

[Guest]

Inge you are the voice of reason why not come and be an advisor in our authority as their advice appears to come out of a very thick fog!

sue

[Lyanne]

As EYFS goes on I think there will be more things changed from 'MUST' to 'guidance to which we have regard '. When I had the pack & my LEA did an Exploring the Pack session, we had hot debate about having to lock away any medicine - with inhalers & epipens this would be absolutely dangerous as well as bad practice. I see it has now changed to

Except in the case of controlled drugs (the supply, possession and administration of which are controlled by the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971) there is no expectation that medicines should be locked away

 

Forgot to say, we are full day care - we have a morning session, lunch club & afternoon session. The total time we are open for children is 5 and ¾ hours. We're in a self-contained portacabin, so have our own toilet room. We just dream of the day there will be a seperate adult toilet as we stand hopping from 1 leg to the other waiting for the children to come out so we can lock the door when we go in.