to think that making children at after school club do a long walk is cruel?

[theDMsaSHAMazade]

am livid after going to a trial run at dd1s after school club.

The infants are expected to do a 15 minute walk through a park rife with unleashed dogs in the cold, wind and rain (and soon to come snow, sleet and hail) to the juniors site, wait in the cold for the juniors and then do a 15 minute walk back. whats making my blood boil is that the after school centre is NEXT DOOR TO the school premises- so ideally they should be dropped off at the club in 2 minutes flat , and the supervisors go and pick up the big kids up. the reason why this didn't happen- one of the childcare workers said she had to leave work early due to paperwork and so couldnt stay on the premises to watch the children!!!!!!!!!! and apparently has had this excuse for years.(this is what one of the supervisors told me.) there is a shortcut that would shorten the trip by half the time but apparently it 'failed risk assessment'. the poor children as young as 4 and 5 were freezing cold with runny noses, and one child was so tired she fell over. when they got back to the centre after a half an hour walk plus a 15 min wait at the junior site, they were all weary and exhausted with runny noses.
dd1 is only at nursery and i feel sick with dread and guilt that she'll have to go through this for a year whilst i go back to uni. she's normally exhausted after a normal full day at school, never mind this :-(
the supervisors are very unhappy about this, they say that their manager won't do anything unless a parent complains. i am going to complain and unleash my fury in writing but i don't want them to delay action as dd starts on monday. i am just feeling so awful and angry that other children have to do this, they ALL looked unhappy and apparently complain about the walk all the time. I'm also shocked that other parents haven't complained but have a strong feeling its because none of them have ever been on the route with the children before (i'm the first parent to do a trial run).
i honestly think this is child cruelty. i am just seething and needed somewhere to rant.

good job you complained so promptly about the new route - hopefully they'll drop it asap. make sure the other parents know the new route and how long it takes. when's the manager going to get back to you?

apparently the official manager is off (how come it's always the very person you need who takes time off the very day you need to sort something out) but i spoke to the guy who was taking her messages for the day; he was VERY understanding and sympathetic and said he wouldn't put his own 4 year old through the same ordeal. I then got a late call from the manager herself as she'd received his message and she said she wanted mt to email all the info so they had it in writing and she couldn't do much until monday unfortinately. some of the options discussed were:

• getting the infants to stay at school with someone from the school, until the after school organisers came back.
• cancelling the service to the juniors site because to provide a service for only one or two children at the inconvenience of 12 others was senseless especially because they are understaffed

-arranging for the two juniors to be dropped off at the club by a third party -getting a fresh risk assessment for the new route because it's a very narrow pavement on a main road where lots of joy riding and speeding takes place and no speed bumps etc in which case if deemed unsafe the whole walk would be automatically out of the question.

thanks for the support x

Sorry, I don't have school age children so after-school clubs are not familiar to me, but I assume you are paying for it? If so, I would be more inclined to be annoyed that the children are being dragged from pillar to post when you are (presumably) paying for them to be kept warm and entertained after school in winter. I think complaining about the walking itself is a bit OTT but I think the time that it is happening at is a bit unreasonable.

I agree with OP and would not be at all happy if my ds had to do this, it is cruel after a day at school when the poor little ones are shattered as it is