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So we've started doing the rounds for the parents who are sending their little sproglets off to school the following year. We have a few who are old hands at this as they already have kids at the school and service. The rest however...not so much.
-We had one parent hand us their completed enrolment form. All looks good until we get to the section where they've ticked off a bunch of things that help us with the service we provide and if we ever need it, whether or not their child gets priority for having a place on-site*. One of the questions is about special needs: they put yes, but under the first page where we have the same question about special/dietary needs, they haven't put anything down. We asked the parent about this-turns out that his wife had filled in the form and his English wasn't that great.
(to his credit, he seemed like a nice guy, just confused) We're going to follow this up with the mum when SHE arrives, but we suspect that the child's needs are communication-based. (the question where they put "yes" refers to needs that are likely to be present for 6 months or more)
-Another couple were nice and turned out to be parents who would use the service on an as-needs basis. While the coordinator and regional manager are giving the spiel about fees, I'm grabbing the fee schedule off the wall to provide this as a visual. I look up just in time to hear my regional manager explaining about CCB and CCR and the look on their face was pretty much
. I yelled out "Childcare Benefit/Childcare Rebate" and the dad just said "Glad to see that someone recognised that we were looking a bit lost!" in a somewhat jokey manner. They turned out to be lovely parents, if a bit eccentric.
-One of the kids we currently look after has a little brother who will be starting school next year. At the moment, mum or dad has been picking their child up with the little brother in tow. The little brother now happily comes up to us and says "hello!" before showing off whatever he's been doing at preschool. I foresee one very smooth transition next year.
-Finally, one parent pretty much handed over her child's allergy and asthma information stating to us "The doctor gave me these and an epipen, but said that chances are we're not going to wind up using them." (Her kids allergies were nut-related, which is not an issue as the school is entirely nut-free.) I was a little bit stunned at her nonchalant attitude towards it, but realised afterwards that she still saw her child as a child, not as the child with allergies/asthma and that she wasn't going to be denied any opportunities.
We have 3 more rounds of this to do. Hopefully i'll have some more stories!
*-In order for us to be recognised by the government and to be able to provide parents with the rebate/benefit, we can be subject to a waiting list if we're full. Priority is awarded to those kids deemed "at-risk" (mostly foster kids), then kids who are either from single parent families, or where the childcare needs are work or study related. After that we can take anyone else. We have never needed to use this as our numbers are between 10-30 a day and we're capped at 35.
-We had one parent hand us their completed enrolment form. All looks good until we get to the section where they've ticked off a bunch of things that help us with the service we provide and if we ever need it, whether or not their child gets priority for having a place on-site*. One of the questions is about special needs: they put yes, but under the first page where we have the same question about special/dietary needs, they haven't put anything down. We asked the parent about this-turns out that his wife had filled in the form and his English wasn't that great.
(to his credit, he seemed like a nice guy, just confused) We're going to follow this up with the mum when SHE arrives, but we suspect that the child's needs are communication-based. (the question where they put "yes" refers to needs that are likely to be present for 6 months or more)-Another couple were nice and turned out to be parents who would use the service on an as-needs basis. While the coordinator and regional manager are giving the spiel about fees, I'm grabbing the fee schedule off the wall to provide this as a visual. I look up just in time to hear my regional manager explaining about CCB and CCR and the look on their face was pretty much
. I yelled out "Childcare Benefit/Childcare Rebate" and the dad just said "Glad to see that someone recognised that we were looking a bit lost!" in a somewhat jokey manner. They turned out to be lovely parents, if a bit eccentric. -One of the kids we currently look after has a little brother who will be starting school next year. At the moment, mum or dad has been picking their child up with the little brother in tow. The little brother now happily comes up to us and says "hello!" before showing off whatever he's been doing at preschool. I foresee one very smooth transition next year.
-Finally, one parent pretty much handed over her child's allergy and asthma information stating to us "The doctor gave me these and an epipen, but said that chances are we're not going to wind up using them." (Her kids allergies were nut-related, which is not an issue as the school is entirely nut-free.) I was a little bit stunned at her nonchalant attitude towards it, but realised afterwards that she still saw her child as a child, not as the child with allergies/asthma and that she wasn't going to be denied any opportunities.
We have 3 more rounds of this to do. Hopefully i'll have some more stories!
*-In order for us to be recognised by the government and to be able to provide parents with the rebate/benefit, we can be subject to a waiting list if we're full. Priority is awarded to those kids deemed "at-risk" (mostly foster kids), then kids who are either from single parent families, or where the childcare needs are work or study related. After that we can take anyone else. We have never needed to use this as our numbers are between 10-30 a day and we're capped at 35.
)
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