Staff's Children In Setting

[Guest]

Hi there,

 

Just wondering what other folks policy is on this...

 

We are a pre-school.

Currently we allow volunteer parents to bring in younger brothers and sisters if they are helping for a morning.

 

We have a situation coming up where staff live/work in different counties and the half-term holiday doesn't quite match up.

A member of staff would like to bring her 6 year old in with her on the Monday morning. Her husband will look after the child on the second day and take a day's holiday. The alternative is that the staff member has to have the Monday(first day back) off and we get more expensive supply cover in. She is the leader.

 

I anticipate no problems with this but it will set a precedent which we then need to follow for any other of the staff. We are a small team of 4 but all have young children.

 

I feel that if we give the message that this is fine but your first responsibility is to the pre-school children and any staff children are well-behaved then it will work.

 

I know that if we worked for Barclays bank we would have to take the day off but this seems a simpler solution.

 

Does an older child affect the ratios?

 

Any thoughts on the above generally?.

 

The member of staff in this case is me!!!!

[Inge]

we used to allow older siblings to come for the session, but under 8 they we counted them counted in ratios.

 

We did have an Ofsted inspection on one day where we had older sibling in and she was happy with it, but did check child's age and ratios were kept.

 

we were registered for over 3 to 5 years.

 

we found it worked well for us, a small team, and no one took advantage of it, they tried to find alternative care but it was not always possible...

 

but in our case all the children had actually been to the preschool, so knew us and tended to just' fit back' into the setting.

 

I know some will say not acceptable, but for us it worked well, we were a childcare setting not quite the same as an office or Bank.

Inge

Edited October 23, 2009 by Inge

[Upsy Daisy]

My thoughts as a childminder may be different from those from group settings. Our ratios are calculated differently so I can't comment on that.

 

I have my own older children in my setting during holidays and it brings a nice new perspective to activities. We think of new ideas, approach things in different ways. The younger children have a role model who is much closer in age to them which they enjoy and supports their learning in a different (and some would say better) way.

 

I'm not sure that you could put a condition of good behaviour on the arrangement.Could someone whose was told their child couldn't come because of their behaviour have cause to claim discrimination?

 

I see you point about if you worked in a bank but it is different in childcare. Having a stranger come in to cover is disruptive for the children (papers in offices don't care who works with them!).

 

So unless Ofsted have some specific rule against it, your insurers don't agree or it makes your ratios unmanageable I think it would be a very positive move.

[sunnyday]

Hi I wondered if this would be useful to you.........

 

 

 

Hope it is........

 

What about insurance?

[Guest]

This is an issue we often seem to face.

 

Thanks for that document Sunny, it is really helpful and I'm going to pass it on to my leader.

[Guest]

My son had to come to work with me for the first week back in September as he did not start school straight away. I spoke to my Chairperson to check it was ok. We were in ratio and covered by insurance so no problem. It was better for them as they would have had to get cover.