To think volunteer wrap around care will just increase social inequalities?

[Ifyoubuildit]

Just that. Ed miliband has said that he will make it legally enforceable that schools have to offer wrap around care but won't provide funding for it so schools will need to find volunteers to run it?

Won't that just mean that in schools that have lots of wealthy families and a strong PTA there will be funding and volunteers. But in less well off areas where parents have to work the school will have to find money from elsewhere and volunteers will be sparse.

Or am I oversimplifying?

I know in my children's school they won't have lots of volunteers as most parents work. I don't want money from other learning pots being spent on wrap around

Also in less well off areas then there could be the opportunity to apply for funding. Certainly in an area near us that's classes as deprived their playscheme and afterschool club (once a week) get funding from Children In Need and I think the Lottery as well.

But it'll still need people to be able, and willing, to do all the work.

*classed not classes

The wraparound care won't be free in the majority of cases - you'll have to pay for it, whether it is delivered via the school using its own staff, or via a third party organisation.

Also (having had communication on this subject with the relevant shadow minister) they will be conducting a thorough consultation exercise with the out of school sector before implementing this 'pledge' as there are a lot of issues to be ironed out. Not least that most clubs will need to be registered with Ofsted and therefore will need to meet a whole raft of strict requirements - not something that can easily be met by an informal group of volunteers.

When dd2 goes to school I would volunteer one day a week. The dc would be with me it would be perfect. They have an after school club so this is hypothetical but I was just thinking yes I could do that. I worked all the way through uni at an after school club (amazing fun) and I'm a social worker now.

Lalyrayoyr place sounds awesome

Childminders offer wrap-around care, as they always have done. They also care for children with additional needs: I currently have 2 attending.

Wrap around care provided by schools could be delivered by networks of childminders: it's not necessarily on the premises childcare. For some schools, anything in the way of after school clubs is impractical and unaffordable.

I hope wrap around care does come into every primary school
Childcare is a nightmare
Just a couple of childminders in the local area with s school of 300
Waiting list for current asc so long
It's so hard to go back to work without family to help

In response to the poster upthread (Pru?) who thinks that volunteers would be unfit to staff a wraparound childcare setting, you don't seem to know much about volunteers.
Far from being a bunch of bumbly dogooders they are often highly qualified individuals who choose to work in an unpaid role, for reasons of their own. The best childcare place I know has 2 paid staff and a team of volunteers who work on a rota system to provide wrap around care for Reception to Y6 that beats similar paid options hands down.
The volunteers are parents, several of which are trained teachers who have chosen not to return to work, who supervise afterschool activities, with free childcare places for their preschoolers being offered during their volunteering time in return.
I'm not going to name or link to the place but it is very highly regarded and has won awards, and shows that it can be done.
That said, I wholeheartedly dislike this government's idea that it can cut services and expect people to pick up the slack for free.
Volunteers are, by and large, an amazing body of highly talented, skilled and qualified people who deserve to be treated with respect not disdain, but to anticipate that these people will run vital services is at best hopeful and at worst cynically exploitative.

And I should add that the amazing childcare place is in what is classed as an area of urban deprivation, or something like that. It is nor staffed by rich mummies pottering about, the volunteers mostly live locally with some travelling in from further afield to be a part of the organisation. The families that benefit have to live in the "deprived" postcode and be working.

I don't see how this could work for special schools with children requiring highly specialised care.

That provision sounds fantastic, Harriet.

Rather than not knowing a lot about volunteers my experience of managing them, being one and seeing the settings they are in leads me to believe that most volunteer-based wrap around provision would be patchy, unreliable and inadequate, with repercussions for safety and continuity of that provision. I would not entrust a primary age child to a setting that didn't value its staff enough to pay them.

Totally agree with you about expecting volunteers to run services that should be paid, whether they are good volunteers or not.

I also think it's a good idea. My son's infant/junior schools have a breakfast club which started around the time he was in Y2 but there's no after-school club, just a few activities.

I think one of the previous HTs was very anti any kind of wrap-around care, and there was/is a strong childminding "mafia" who did not want competition. And lots of SAHMs (not sure why people oppose something they don't need, how does it affect them?). Things have changed over the years with more and more mums working especially at junior school level but there's still no after-school club. Other schools in the area do have them. If there were a legal requirement to offer one it would be great.

I'm a teacher. My son is eight and he is in wraparound care before school from 7.30, and after school until 6pm. I'd love it to be free.

Tristan Hunt was interviewed about this on News night last night. Seems quite similar in essence to what the conservative government previously announced as a future aspiration. Using schools straight after school as the default option for sports / music / arts clubs. Parents still pay but meets objective of providing after school care and enrichment activities. At the moment I know parents who pay for child care but then have no time or money left for after school activities in the evening!
Our local authority is already going in this direction and to the extent that funding is available it is used to subsidise low income families. Many of the clubs become much cheaper per person once there are enough participants. Staff in most cases are not volunteers but people who would be running sports etc clubs privately anyway. Think the volunteer element would be more in the admin and coordination side.
The doubts I have heard expressed are from things like scout groups which are currently run by volunteers who would not be available during the day. This is my interpretation based on all the bits and pieces I have heard and far more detail than was proposed yesterday. Interested in what is happening elsewhere. Also I am in Scotland and education falls under Scottish Parliament so may differ slightly, but I think same direction of travel.

Bummer. Wouldn't make a difference to me then.

It won't be free so the users of the wraparound care will pay for it as they do now. It should not require funding, it should be self funding. Some after school clubs return a small surplus to the school.

Where on earth have you got the idea it needs to be run by volunteers from op? Engage brain.

Our school used to have an after-school club that run until 6.00, but it had to stop because there weren't enough people using it. So i'm not sure how all schools can be made to offer wrap around care.

Brain engaged - I read it in the paper which said it would be implemented by "armies of volunteers" - silly brain, reading the paper. Won't happen again