Jam sandwiches at wraparound care

In their other meals presumably

RTFT.

They offer cheese and ham, which her child chooses not to have.

You do need microwave access and someone overseeing that process (much more time consuming than making sandwiches). Not all A/S are going to have that available.

Another poster said she was paying £8 for a session for each child. That has to cover staff costs, insurance, any materials needed for activities, drinks and snacks. Please explain how they can provide something other than toast or a tiny basic sandwich as an after-school snack on that amount of money.

I can't be the only one who wouldn't fancy giving their kids any chicken, cheese or ham that was cheaper then the sort of jam the ASC is no doubt using.

You don't need to be a trained chef but you do need your food hygiene qualifications. You also need access to a microwave or oven to begin with, which many ASC's don't have.

Also, if one staff member is in the kitchen cooking and preparing food, you need to pay someone else to supervise the children to keep within ratio.

I’m with you here OP, you can absolutely request that your child doesn’t have jam sandwiches. I wouldn’t be happy about this four days a week either. Where is the protein

Pay for a Nanny who will give her exacrly what you want her to eat

A small jam sandwhich is not going to make your 4 year old fat. Children actually need sugar as part of a healthy diet
.......

And she isnt 'full on Jam'
She is full from the bread. If it had cheese or Ham in she would still be full.

Who's going to pay for the more expensive food?

Chicken is not cheaper than jam. I'm sure you know that if you'd paused to think.

The A/S offers ham and cheese sandwiches as well as jam. The OP's child won't eat those though.

The hypocrisy is strong with this one! School are happy for the kids to have jam sandwiches when it comes down to the amount of £££ it will eat into to serve them healthy food. All the while they’re happy to police lunchboxes & dictate to parents that those type of things are unacceptable during the school day. I came across the same issue when every PTA event to raise cash is hot dogs, chocolate & crap constantly being resold at the end of the school day to entice the kids with the “my friend is having it” scenario but my kid wasn’t allowed to eat a sugar free ice pop I’d sent in for snack time. If you don’t pick your kid up until very late & tea is Jam sandwiches 4 times per week I wouldn’t be happy with that at all. They shouldn’t even be on the menu imo, it’s basically a sugar sandwich & they probably use the cheapest jam they can get their hands on with a higher sugar content than fruit. I don’t think you’re being unreasonable at all, the rate of dental caries for children in our area is shocking & the school aren’t helping it with jam sandwich “snacks” I also don’t think you should have to take a packed lunch when you’re probably paying through the nose for this service!

Oh come on. You don't need a trained chef to stick a potato in the microwave or make a sandwich! What people do need is education as to what is healthy and good for you and what is sugar filled, processed crap and is definitely not

Except many ASC's are based in one room with a tiny fridge and no facilities to cook or heat up anything.

PP's example of jacket potato and soup - who is going to cook it, and pay for the use of the kitchen? How are they going to keep it at a safe temperature? Who's going to clean up the kitchen afterwards? Do the staff have the appropriate food hygiene certificates to be making and storing hot meals?

And who's going to pay for all these fresh ingredients, and where are they going to be stored all day? Who are you going to pay to prepare it all?

You mentioned soup and jacket potatoes, which presumably you expect to be served warm. There was no indication that the facilities for this are even available to the ASC, and they certainly wouldn't be in every school. If they were, that would be an extra cost. So it's not that simple.

We’re an easygoing house but I wouldn’t want jam more than twice a week tops.

There isn’t the trained staff in this country to put that much effort into meal prep. I was lucky I had a good nursery and there was a chef on site that prepared food from scratch however this phasing out because they can’t afford to pay chef wages. Same with school dinners. I suspect it’s even worse with after school
club.!

And as I said earlier, healthier foods are usually cheaper than sugar, additive filled crap and for the fees childcare providers charge, they ought to provide decent food and not cheap, unhealthy crap

During the day for school lunches. yes. I'm not sure it's ever been common to have ASC that offered this variety of food prep.

The distinction is important because it's difficult to fill the hours when staffing ASC. There's a pool of people who want/need to work school hours, that isn't matched by people who want/need 3-6pm ish.

I don't understand your question. The nursery is supplying food, so why not just replace the crap they are serving with different food? Surely whatever the food, it still has to be prepared and cleaned up afterwards?

Are you saying that they can prepare and clean up after a jam sandwich but not do the same if a wholemeal bread and chicken sandwich is prepared?

Used to be done years ago. Fresh ingredients bought in bulk and prepared on the premises.

You don't quite seem to have understood the problem.

Everyone knows that UPF free options exist, notwithstanding the attraction some of the self professed health advocates on this thread seem to have for ham. The question is about practicalities, ie the things you were told not to forget and then didn't address at all.

A lot of ASC in the UK is walking a real tightrope at the moment due to a combination of difficulty getting staff, falling rolls and lower demand because more people work remotely. In some schools it's just not viable, and some of those that do exist are clinging on. That means any change to the food offered needs to not only fit within existing staff and facilities constraints, but also not raise the cost enough to make the setting less viable. Nothing you've said suggests you've even considered this.

I honestly don’t understand this. Why are people expecting their school aged children to NOT be hungry after school? It was absolutely normal to feed your kids tea once they got in from school and then supper/dinner before bed.

I honestly don’t understand this. Why are people expecting their school aged children to NOT be hungry after school? It was absolutely normal to feed your kids tea once they got in from school and then supper/dinner before bed.

£23 a day is feeding your own children isnt it ? School meals used to be freshly cooked using fresh ingredients. Somewhere along the way we’ve lost sight of what’s important and budgets have been reduced so that basically our kids are being fed shite with very little nutritional value.

There are a lot of parents that don’t even bother feeding their kids tea and rely on wrap around or nursery to feed their kids a tea. I have even read on here that supper is often cheese crackers and bits of fruit because nursery feeds them tea !