I'm the chairperson of an out of school care and playscheme group. It's all set up properly (registered and inspected etc), but is run entirely by volunteers. It's the only way to offer an affordable service in the area that it is in. The asc has a long waiting list as we can only take so many children. We could take more if we had more volunteers, but we can only rely on so many people (we still take 36 children per day).
The playscheme operates on a first-come-first-served basis on a set registration day. It's the only way to do it fairly, people can (and do) get someone else to come for them if they can't make it for work reasons. We take 80 children (40am 40pm) and again it's all run by volunteers. In October we turned away around about 20 more children.
Today I overheard people talking about the group at a local soft play. People have been asking if we run a playscheme at spring half term and one of these Mums mentioned that it was a shame that we don't. Another woman in her group launched into a spiel about how she would never send her child because "they're all volunteers, I'd only ever use proper childcare". The Mum who'd mentioned it first quickly said that she knew some of the volunteers had worked in schools (I don't know if she realised I was there or not). The moany one was a bit sarky still, but mainly just kept saying "Oh I didn't know that..." whenever the first lady told her things about us, but was still adamant that volunteers could never be as good as "proper" childcare like the OSC her kids go too.
I'm so pissed off. We work so hard for this. Over the years we've build up good links with the college so we have volunteers who are aiming for careers working with children. The volunteer staff have training and qualifications - last playscheme in there was a retired head teacher, a childminder, a teacher who is on a career break as her children are young, two university students who are both training to be teachers, one of the Dad's who runs the local rugby club (the kids were in their element as he knows the proper rules of the no-touch rugby kit we purchased), two parents who are both hoping to start college in September and a 17-year-old volunteer who used to come to us as a kid and wants to work with children when she leaves school. All gave up their time for nothing, they've all been through all of the relevant checks and all have to have basic training before they start with us (CP, First Aid etc).
It annoys me so much that the £50 per day place along the road with their nice, shiny building are seen as a cut above when their staff are mostly teenagers, their staff turnover is constant and their last inspection report was considerably poorer than ours are seen as better simply because they are "professional".
Sorry for the long, whiny rant. It was bad timing to overhear something as the treasurer and I are just about to go through the fun process of applying for our next lot of funding and next Sunday we're all doing our first aid refresher!