DC’s after school club has now increased it’s prices to £20 per evening, 3:15pm until 6pm and I’m wondering if it’s actually providing a good enough setting.
They have a great website: nutritious, hot meals provided every evening and lots of activities such as crafts, board games, toys to play with etc.
In reality what I’ve seen has been meals such as cocktail sausages with mash & frozen veg covered in instant gravy, or potato smiley faces with pizza etc. and there are biscuits or cakes given out every night.
The only craft activities seem to be colouring and drawing, mostly when I arrive the TV is on so loudly that they don’t hear the doorbell and some of the kids are playing on tablets.
DC is too young to tell me accurately what the eat or do every evening and I obviously only see a small part, I very rarely see what they eat.
So I emailed their central office to ask for a weekly menu and list of activities provided, citing the examples on the website. The response has been that if I have concerns then I’m to raise them directly with the woman that runs the club and tv/tablet time is limited. I’m happy to do that if I ever see her and not one of the very young women that always seem to be there when I pick up but should the company itself be adhering to some sort of guidelines? Should there not be a central menu of what they’re feeding them each evening or what activities are on offer?
I’m not sure if I’m expecting too much from them. At the moment we’re just massively limiting how often we have to use it, not because of the price but because quite frankly I think they’re a bit crap.