Mouseketeer

If you mean as a volunteer we have on occasion asked one to cover staff absence (if DBS/suitable person check in place), we don’t leave them unsupervised or expect them to carry out toileting duties, you’d need to make sure your qualified to non-qualified staff ratios work. Employed staff can be on the committee if you are running with the correct constitution (ours 2011 PSLA/ EYA) or your constitution if that’s included. If committee members have a volunteer DBS they can’t be paid to work, if that is going to happen they need a fully paid one. This is only my understanding of a confusing situation 🤔

Brilliant! We took about £950 on ours less some gift aid people added that we can’t include, PayPal fees and a bit of outlay like the lotteries licence we expect to clear £850 which is 4x what we would have made on normal Xmas raffle. indoor play as a whole group for the first time this week ...oh boy the noise and mess, they have so forgotten how to adjust from outdoor to indoor play, has anyone else noticed this? So wishing we’d started back a week early and was finishing on the 11th now, a few challenging children have staff moral quite low as it is and now a couple of staff are getting anxious about having a positive case in the last week, I’m trying not to even think about that and the feeling of guilt that will ensue if it happens and it messes up their Xmas plans hang in there everyone 🤞

This is now included in our LA parent funding agreements which has really helped.

Hi Rufus, what is your reason for not offering 30hrs being open that many hours a day/year? Will you lose a fair amount between your fee and funded rate? We introduced a ‘fairer funding charge’ for all funded hours a while ago (it doesn’t cover the loss but it helps) and all pay it, you could make it the full different and be precise in what it covers. I would also look at some similar/close settings websites and see what their daily pattern of funding to fee paying hours are, many charge the hourly rate for early start/lunch time/later hours and only allow funded hours between certain times e.g 8am to 9am hourly rate, 9am to 12pm funded hours, 12pm to 1pm hourly rate, 1pm to 4pm funded, 4pm to collection time hourly rate and charge for meals provided. maybe survey your parents, tell them you’re considering offering 30hrs but there will be a small hourly charge to offset the financial loss between the funding rate and your fee rate, explain what the charge will cover and ask if they will be willing to pay this. We only charge 30p an hour but it’s an extra £1500 next term on my estimated hours. good luck

I don’t understand what the difference between childminders and childcare on domestic premises is in these reports?

Thanks zigzig though I’m not unwell .....it just sounds like I might be if I ever get the flu jab 😜

Ours is the same, thought about returfing but worried it will be back to the same in no time, but not sure what the alternative is 🤷‍♀️

You’re really not selling this ladies ....swollen arm, headache, fluey 🤕 🤒 😷

My surgery sent a flu text months ago saying it would be offered to 50+ with a tag line that basically said ‘don’t even bother asking as we don’t have enough’...but I guess they’re expecting too soonish, I’ve never had one before but went ‘yes’

Nor us, was it from your county? I have just had a text to ask if I was interested in a flu jab...if I reply ‘Yes’, they’ll let me know when they have supplies available 😕 we’ve made it through another week unscathed, hoping everyone else can say the same, bit of a ‘oh my we best give some serious thought to ‘C’ plans’ moment today 🎄

Isn’t she ever...I hope the younger ones don’t pander to her, I’m liking the castle though 🙂

We use Capita, was £52 last time I did a staff member, very quick (3 or 4 days) providing they don’t have a number of house moves.

It’s very frustrating zigzag, I had a committee member that we then employed, I phoned my Ey team and was told we had to reapply for a paid position dbs and there was a large fine if employees were found to be working on a volunteer dbs, my Gov dbs is enhanced but it is for a volunteer position, I was sent info years ago about being fined but I can’t find it now.

Because giving a straight answer to any question isn’t their thing 😔

I don’t think it’s about whether they already have an enhanced dbs but rather they can’t be paid on a volunteer dbs (I guess if they could we’d ask people to volunteer for a couple of weeks and pay £8.10 instead of £52)

We’ve used Tapestry since 2014 (I think, a good few years anyway), parent partnership was the main reason for moving to online and this has worked out very well, on the whole our parents are pretty good at using it, even those who don’t comment or add so much I can see they are viewing obs/newsletters etc and if they’re not they get a gentle nudge, I say a gentle nudge it’s more ‘have you forgot your password’ 😆 We use it for cohort tracking (I find the group Summative in school years and the Age Band tracker most useful for this), it shows where individual chn need next steps but also if we need to improve provision e.g. if our oldest boys didn’t show much progress from the previous term in writing what can we add to promote this? (That is the only planning we do) Time: Many people say it saves time compared to the paper learning journal, we haven’t really found this, staff still need time out of ratio to add and assess for their key children (but I think a lot of that is because they do too much that isn’t necessary). Top tip: Ensure staff are consistent in the band a child is working at, going back to pick up missed statements or selecting one in a higher band when they aren’t really secure in the previous will throw the progress tracking. Reflections: Great for sharing info, policy updates etc with staff, staff can add CPD feedback, add handouts and suggest for discussion anything we should/could implement, we can add any changes we want to make so it’s kind of our SEF too. (Love this feature). Negative for us personally: I would like to be able to just pick up things you know chn can do from the DM screen (I know, I know, don’t shoot me), as some analysis screens work on selected statements and if you don’t ‘tick’ statements a couple screens don’t give you any information. Care diary /accident reports: I can’t comment on as we don’t use, I just haven’t taken the time to work out how really. Reports: These are great for shared setting info, 2 yr checks, transition reports.. On the whole I can’t imagine working without it now, good luck 🙂

Crumbs you’ve been busy and put me to shame 😱 hoping you’re granddaughter is ok

I think you’re right sunnyday, it seems a very relaxed lockdown, except for the poor businesses who have had to shut up shop again. the question came up as a parent told me that both sets of grandparents would still be collecting, one set as mums ‘childcare bubble’ and one set as dads ‘childcare bubble’ .

It seems slightly stacked against non-single parents who both work, you’d have thought the main carer could have both bubbles and the non-main carer a support bubble.

Hi all, hope you’ve had a good week, drama free here which I’ll take. Do any of you have families affected by the ‘support’ and/or ‘childcare’ bubbles? We have had a couple families (not single parents)who use both sets of grandparents but have now nominated which set will be their childcare bubble yet we have children with single parents who now seem to have 4 bubbles going on, each single parent of said children can have a support bubble each and a childcare bubble each .....is this correct or am I miss reading the guidance?

I had reams of it too from when we were all sat here trying to work out the formula, my fee loss was still higher in Feb than now but my funding much higher so can’t see it being worth bothering with again. sorry to read about your son, hope he’s soon over it, this trace and contact system is a shambles isn’t it, I don’t know of many being tested but the home test kit people seem to get their results quicker, even allowing for it having to be posted back than the testing at the centres 🤷‍♀️I have a friend that has signed up for weekly testing of the whole family for research...what a waste of resources, taking up lab time to get results when surely there are enough people turning up for tests they could ask to be part of the research without sending people around to houses creating more work 😠

Nor me Lynned, I’d be hard pushed to remember how I worked it out last time 🤦‍♀️

Thanks sunnyday, best wishes to you too and everyone else, hopefully we won’t have to cope with too many challenges 🤞

Ohhhhhh how is it the end of half term already 😢 I hope the run up to the end of term is kind to you all 🙏

We set up a charity pay pal account with a view of people buying via that but I have no idea how you know who has bought which tickets ....I guess someone on the committee does 🤷‍♀️