Jump to content
Home
Forum
Articles
About Us
Tapestry

3 days on 3 days off


Recommended Posts

Posted

Hi there This is my first post so here goes.

 

Do any of you have children that do 3 different days a week to fit in around shift work? e.g. one week monday, tuesday wednesday following week its shifted a day so tuesday, wednesday, thursday and so on. Have any of you come across this? How is it managed/ charged? Do you charged for a full week as effectively they are taking a full time place, or would you charged for 3 full days a week, even though it could full for 2 days over the weekend? I don't immediately want to say to this family that we can't help them without exploring all possible avenues. Any thoughts greatly received

Posted

As we could not fill the space on the other days we had to charge for the full week . We could not afford to effectively lose the income for the days we could not fill because we could not guarantee the hours.

 

Most decided to put them in for the full week and not remove them for the days they were not at work..

Posted

We are quite a unique setting in that we offer shift patterns to about 30 families. We only charge for the sessions they do on a week to week basis. It isn't easy, but it sets us apart from other local settings and parents like our flexibility. We also charge by the hour, and break that hour down into 15 minutes! Fridays are spent sorting rotas for the following week as some parents don't know their hours until then, which is tricky, but most have a set pattern, although that could be fortnightly, 3 weekly or monthly so no week is ever the same!

  • Like 2
Posted

Good to see it can work for some if you have enough who swap their patterns , but with only one or sometimes 2 you do end up losing income by not being able to fill the hours.

Posted

We do but it's only for 1 child and we run where ever possible with 1 staff over ratio (and that's why we're always short of money!!) so it's never a problem - I wouldn't get my family if we charged for the full week.

Posted

Hi thank you ever so much for your feedback.

 

We pride ourselves on being flexible however I'm not sure whether I could be *that* flexible. Come September we will be doubling in size so i can imagine that we will have spaces however one of the children is 6 months so whilst it maybe ok now, this time next year or the year after maybe a real problem. Laura that's fantastic what you offer, but I don't think I could cope with the extra work in sorting that out!!

 

I also wonder if it becomes known that we do this it may encourage others our way and I don't know whether that would be a good thing or a bad thing. The area we are in means we have 85% of our children funded only. It would be nice to have someone pay for 3 days! Maybe we will try and charge them a full week and see what their reaction is??

Posted (edited)

It's certainly a job! I'm spending the evening doing the registers for next week, I then pass to my sister (we run the nursery together), who counts the numbers and does the staffing. We have just started using a new management software program and the developers are looking at the grid we use and are going to try to replicate it for us to save the counting as it took 4 hours this week!

I'm lucky that we have flexible staff and bank staff that come in as and when.

 

If you do charge for the whole week, you could always say to them that on the days they don't push you over ratio you wouldn't charge them as you wouldn't need to get an extra staff member in? or perhaps half fees?

Edited by laura
Posted

That really is a lot of work, but what a fantastic dedicated service you offer!

We have decided that we are going to charge them for 3 full days a week- we generally run 1 person over so we could cover it, and they will have to let me know in advance which days they require. The weeks when they only require 1 session will be up to them if they want their child to come in or not!

If I am back here in a year asking whether it would be ethical to terminate a contract you know if didn't work out! Many thanks all :1b First real post!! Yay

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue. (Privacy Policy)