Contracts query

[lunavix]

Hi all haven't been around for ages....

I'm finally taking on a new child, have had an abundance of time wasters....

The thing is this is very flexible day-to-day basis, basically it's for an hour in the mornings or evenings, maybe one or two days a week. It doesn't overlap with the other children I had - technically - so I have agreed for now, but I have said if any problems arise we will take it from there. Tbh I'm just desperate to take another child on.

One problem is the time this child leaves is the time my regular children arrive. They are nearly always late, and the parents have promised to be punctual. The chance of them overlapping is 3 in 14 - This child could come in the morning OR evening any day of the week including weekends, and in the evening it doesn't overlap. Is this potentially a huge problem?

I know I could be charging retainers and all sorts, but it's quite difficult as there is a small language barrier too. I'm working on getting all my policies etc understood!

My other question is what with these timewasters, two people have filled out contracts which they never used. Can I just bin these as they never started?

Thanks!

Well you might not be able to let the parents of the children arriving leave until the parents of the child leaving have arrived (iyswim)

I wouldn't bin the contract, I'd just file it. Then when they claim WTC and you get a form from the IR, you can give them all the details.......and the fact that they never came or paid

Okay then.

Also, as I gather, one of them is kind of a supply worker. How I feel it works is he rings me up to let me know the upcoming shifts for the week or so, which I cover.

So I guess I need to talk to him about whether he expects me to be on call each night too. For example, if he says he needs me three times in a week, then I decide to do something one of those nights, what would happen if he were to work that night....

argh!

As katymac says, if children overlap for a short time because parents are late collecting, you should technically make the arriving child's parent stay until the late parent has arrived (was that complicated or what?) In the real world, I'm not sure that I would be able to enforce a parent to be late for work because another parent hasn't collected their own child!

Re. contracts - I will agree verbally the "terms and conditions", but tend to fill in contracts once the child has actually started (which is probably not the recommended way to do it, but it's always worked out OK).