sure start, is your centres like this now?

[laughlovelife]

I attend sure start groups with ds, ds is 2.10 months, and when the new timetable came out, it has came with many rules.

We attend busy bodies, messy play and stay and play, on various days.

New rules are, you can now only attend one of the above, and need to pre-book your space, and can only attend 12 sessions a year.

The groups above are only for age 2-3, however when they child turns 3, they are no longer allowed to attend so basically its age 2. So in July my ds will be 3, so will no longer be allowed to use the groups, as he will be attending nursery.

Childminders/relatives cant pre-book, nor attend as only parents can.

Their is 6 of us who attend, who all have children ranging from 7 months to 3 .4 years, some of us are childminders, aunts, parents etc... and now none of us can attend the groups together, due to these rules.

Are we the only sure start doing this, and does anyone think these new rules are mental.

We went on Thursday to stay and play, and were told we couldn't go in, as my nephew was too young, and 2 childminders couldn't go in as one child was 3, and because they we're childminders, so we were all refused entry.

So basically if you have a child age 2, you cant take their younger sibling in

It sounds bonkers to me. Have you asked why? I guess maybe there was too much demand so they have to limit it.

I think at ours certain things need to be prebooked, but the stay and play is always drop-in and open to everyone.

It sounds bonkers to me. Have you asked why? I guess maybe there was too much demand so they have to limit it.

I think at ours certain things need to be prebooked, but the stay and play is always drop-in and open to everyone.

yes, they said because of the government funding, and also that it was the guidelines that CC had set out.

well - I agree with childminders not being allowed access. the whole point of sure start centres is to support vulnerable families, not to provide a free soft play centre for child minders. I do think it's a bit daft to be so strict re age limits when siblings are concerned.

Surestart centres usually offer seperate sessions for chilminders; I'm not really surprised that they were refused entry to a family session.

There are new harsher guidelines regarding age groups and entry: They are trying to pinpoint developmental stages and therefore are tending to run groups that are for stricter age-group bands. (I have never heard of an older or younger sibling being refused entry on that ground alone however.)

Many centres have had to for management "clusters" to save money. This means that the same staff are being used in different locations (two or three per cluster) and that the centres are not open all the time . This was felt to be prefereable to shutting down some centres entirely.

Because of health and safety issues, many centres do operate either a first-come first-served, or a book-in-advance system. More families trying to fit into less space is just not practical. In theory you might have the families from three centres trying to get into one session (more strictly age targeted) with all their siblings. It just doesn't work.

For example, if there is a 20 child maximum space and five families and childminders turn up with 3 children each that means there is less space or single child attendees of the correct age group.

In a climate where there is less funding things did have to change. You will find similar changes in most, if not all centres, but yours does seem to be having more trouble than most adjusting.

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In ours they have now limited it to one session a week and we have to book up, but thats only because theres a lot of demand for these groups as its becoming very popular.

as for only allowing till the child turns 3 thats not right. we will be going till dd starts nursery in sept. she turns 3 in june.

childminders in ours used to have a whole wednesday afternoon to come in and the rest of us couldn't access it but now they they can come in but the rest of us can too and that seems very fair to me.

older siblings can come to ours especially at the holidays. so thats very unfair.

Childminders here dont have allocated groups, and I thought the whole point of a childminder is going from home to home, my friends of the childminders have special cases (parents dont work, but children need to be away from home for a few hours a day) so its not the childminders who are loosing out its the children.

I think our centres will end up closing, tbh, our hall fits in 35 people, in all the time I have attending, no more than 15 children have been their. When I as our staff member, no one has booked on yet they had to refuse entry to at least half of the people who normally attend.

All welcome at ours for drop-in sessions including siblings and childminders. Some specific groups/classes need to be pre-booked. Long may it continue! Cutting funding is surely a false economy. Reckon I'd be costing the NHS far more in anti-depressants if not for the drop in groups.

At our cc there are certain groups that are strictly for certain ages and no siblings allowed, some that have to be prebooked and 2 that are drop in for all ages. Mostly I don't mind even though with my children aged 5, 4 and 1 it has been awkward trying to get to groups as when I had DS2 I had a 1 year old and when I had DS3 I had a 2 year old so couldn't take them to the under 1's groups. When DS3 was born we had to stop going to the 2 year old group that DS2 really enjoyed. The breastfeeding group was available to all breastfeeding mums and siblings until recently but now they have banned siblings and any breastfed children who are walking which I think is a shame. I know I struggled with breastfeeding DS2 and DS3 more than I did with DS1.

All Children's Centre targets are moving towards reaching the children who need the services the most, whilst simultaneously cutting funding. In an ideal world everyone would be welcomed and go along to whatever they chose to but the harsh reality is that high quality services are very expensive to provide universally.

Ours used to offer a whole range of amazing activities universally, now we a have one or two stay and plays for everyone and the really expensive stuff is for the hardest to reach.

The SS my DS goes to has a variety of sessions some are for specific age groups (baby group - under 1, cooking afternoon - 2 to 4, learning through play - 1 to 4, street dance - 5 to 11) but others are for any child under 5. Specific sessions require booking others are open.
My DS goes to his with nursery which I know a lot of people think is wrong but I think it's important to realise that over half the kids at his nursery are from deprived backgrounds and only attend nursery on their free hours or subsidised places (it's a non for profit nursery) and are just the kids that SS is supposed to target. From talking to one of mums, she wouldn't have known about the centre if it hadn't have been for the nursery... They have since helped her with job applications and other services which I believe is a good outcome for everyone and just what the centre is set up for.
I think you will find a lot of variation on how they are run from council to council.

If there is a group of you, why don't you arrange to meet regularly at each other's houses in turn?.... You don't really need SureStart do you?

It sounds a bit bizarre, but if the sessions are busy then the need to restrict it somehow to make sure that everyone gets to go to at least one session a week.

I'm a voluteer at our local children's centre. We have no restrictions on any of our groups!

Childminders/relatives cant pre-book, nor attend as only parents can

so if a grandparent has full custody she/he can't attend.

MCHappy, the restriction would be to the full-time guardian. A GP who is in loco-parentis full-time would certainly be allowed to book in theses circumstances. Most children's centres will have anputreach worker who knows the minutiae of the families and wouldn't make it difficult for you to attend.

an outreach.

This is a funding issue. The government has cut funding to children's centres and most of them have had to severely restrict services, lose staff and concentrate on core services. We had an after school group cancelled because they had funding for under 5s only.

Regarding childminders, they continue to receive specific funding for home carers (childminders and nannies). Most, I think, use this funding for a separate Playgroup, but it may also be used for training events. I heard that the reason for this is because OFSTED wanted to avoid us meeting up in each others homes due to ratio restrictions. I'm not sure how true that is, but it sounds likely.
In fact, the playgroups are not just for childminders: they are open to nannies as well.
Why shouldn't the children in our care access funding that every other child is entitled to? Nurseries were allocated small fortunes to improve their environments; their staff have access to training that we are barred from. Parents are allowed to take their children to classes and groups put on by the childrens centres. Why would anyone want to discriminate against children cared for by nannies and childminders?

I'm in the process of working with the sure start Center in my area. I recognised a need and also noticed the ss was empty most of the time. So far we have started a sty and play which reached full capacity in two weeks....... Ss have now cut capacity to half and made it book on only for six weeks at a time which has alienated 9 families for 6 weeks.
Also getting a childminding group going but ss being quite restrictive and making it difficult for us.

As for the CM/parent issue. I am both. I care for my own son (1 in a few days) and one other child. I'm an enigma that ss don't know what to do with.

argh. i dont like the pre booking thing - that alienates people in the first place and especially hard to reach groups. this is basic social policy - that unless you make services universal then you risk the uptake being much lower - child benefit was the best example of this.

some of the cc where i am in plymouth operate an area specific policy. for example one of the centres does this amazing forest school thing but you have to be in the centres catchement area to book. if not you can go on a waiting list and attend if there are cancellations as they want the spaces fillede - seems fair enough to me!

soft play etc should be drop in surely thats easier for most parents.

cc seem to really vary though. my old one used to do table top dales for baby gear whrn i was preg with dd - huge success but they were managed away with for some reason. baby massage was always a waiting list of months so i stopped bothering.

im a peer supporter at my local cc now - well i was until we got so irritated with the manager we moved our group to a cafe because they just didnt seem to want the latch on group there :-(

meanwhile they have no nappy bins or disposal facilities - if you see the midwife there you have to dispose of your own wee. ffs a children cnetre with no nappy bins?????? i ask you!!

yup, im in hillingdon and all the cc in my end of the borough have ridiculous rules like this! its really inconvenient - you have to phone at a certain time on friday mornings and book the places. other times ive tried to book somewhere and they basically said no, because you have 3 kids we dont want to give you that many spaces. they also have groups for specific age groups which means i wouldnt be able to go cos my kids dont all fit into it, and overall its just really hard to actually access the stay and plays! so i dont see how on earth they are gonna reach anyone who is struggling as they make it so hard to access!!!! it really pees me off actually

not all centres have made these kind of rules. i still go back to my old one when i can and they are still normal and great