Contracts With Parents

[Guest MaryEMac]

Am not sure if this is in the correct place but here goes. Does anyone have a written contract for parents to sign when their childs starts at the setting? My chairperson has asked me to post, because when we go back in September we hope to open more afternoon sessions. Our problem is that we have to be out of the building by 2.50 pm so that the after school club can set up. At the moment we have one parent who is constantly late to pick up her child after our only pm session and this is making it difficult for us to get out on time. We wondered if it would be an idea to start as we mean to go on and have a contract and give it out to all parents in Sept.

Any help would be gratefully accepted.

 

Mary

[alis2son]

We had similar problems a few years ago. We sent letters out alerting parents that their places were conditional on them adhering to the policies of the setting and the session times and that there would be a £5 charge for late collections of children over 10 mins or persistent offenders, followed by withdrawal of the place if they continued to do so. We no longer have a problem.

If parents are funny about it, or you feel you need to explain further, then remind them of the position you are in with regards to the sharing of the setting and that they are keeping the staff behind unfairly.

[Deb]

Here's ours which you could adpapt?

Parental_Agreement_for_fsf.doc

[Guest]

Here's ours for you as well Mary.

Linda

Terms_and_conditions.doc

Terms_and_conditions_2.doc

[Guest MaryEMac]

Thanks Deb, this will give us a starting point to write our own.

 

Mary

[Guest MaryEMac]

Thanks to you as well Linda.

 

Mary

[Beau]

Hi,

 

I'm moving this into the management issues part of the forum for you.

[Guest Wolfie]

At the risk of sounding mercenary, I agree with Alis2son - the introduction of a fine system susally sorts out any problems of that kind very quickly!

[Running Bunny]

You could always throw in the insurance line as well - you are only insured up to a certain time, so if anything happened to their child after that time, you are not covered. (it doesn't necessarily have to be true )

 

We used to do this for those that turned up at 7.45 for an 8.00 start - it soon stopped!

[Helen]

That's just what we did! Here's our Parents' Charter.

parentscharter.doc

[Inge]

we also have a charge for leyte collections ours is £5.00 per 15mins!! this gets paid directly to staff who have been inconvienienced.

this is in our parental agreement similar to the others, but we also have a form for parents to sign when they collect late which gives time of collection and records if we had to make phone calls to parent with times. They usually have 1 warning and just by having to sign to say they have been given this. It has stopped late collectors except in emergencies.

may sound a bit 'over the top' but we had a complaint made against us to Ofsted by a parent who claimed she was on time and had been 15 mins late causing us problems with next session. She raised some issue with them about confidentiality and not being open which was not upheld and resulted in us making parents very aware of the need to be on time.

 

Inge

[Guest]

interesting reading I have this type of problem too but think I do not find them enough as one parent said it was cheaper to pay the extra than pay for a sitter to come and collect them when the parent had a meeting!

[Inge]

you really do have to set the payment at an amount your parents will find unreasonable, this may depend on the area you are in , but you really have to be consistant and follow through with charges

 

Inge

[Guest Wolfie]

I totally agree, Inge!

[alis2son]

I would agree with that, and also that you have to know when to draw the line. The idea being that if they are consistently late then issue with a warning that they are not adhering to the rules and as you cant meet their requirements they should contact the CIS website to find an alternative.

 

Its not ideal but you have to be firm and remember that ultimately you are running a business and while you will do your best for the child and parent they cant be allowed to walk all over you.

[Guest MaryEMac]

Thanks everyone for your input. I have discussed it with my chairperson and we have decided that if they are late once (with no good reason) they will be reminded about collection time. The second time they will get a warning and the third time the child will be excluded from that particular session for 2 sessions and the fees will still need to be paid. Hopefully we won't need to carry this out.

 

Mary

[Guest Wolfie]

Let us know how you get on!