CM Club:Can someone clrify the reasoning behind the rules for using assistants?

[Katymac]

Unless I have completely misunderstood

Assistants can collect early years children from school/nursery
Assistants cannot collect childcare children from school

So the same child can be collected by an assistant for 2 or 3 or 4 years & then once they move into year 1 they can't

Why?

(as I say I may have completely misunderstood but this is how it has been explained to me)

Your description is spot on KatyMac this has been doing my head in for ages now, it makes pick ups and drop offs a pita.

When I contacted Ofsted to ask what I was supposed to do about their new rules I was told to carry on as normal (I have consents for DH who is assistant to be in sole charge) but technically what you have posted is correct. When I asked why the rules were changed the answer was something about the age differences between the EY and CC groups basically they said that EY children had a bigger age gap between carer, whereas a child in CC group may be only a few years younger than the assistant (think the example they gave me was a child of 11 / 12 being cared for by an assistant of 18) so in the childs view they may not consider the assistant old enough to be in charge of them

All sounds a bit pants tbh, basically for us it meant that DH could collect the under 5's from school but not the junior mindees . I think someone sits in an office somewhere and thinks up really wierd and bizarre ways to make CM's lives even more difficult.

and am i right in thinking an assistant has to have 1st aid training to be left in the house with children on their own but not if they're out on own with children, ie on a pre-school run?

It's so bloody complicated

Assistants can only be in sole charge of a mindee if
a) They have written parental consent (even if your reg cert says they can)
b) they have a full and current 1st aid - this applies to indoors and outdoors -
c) sole charge is only allowable for short periods of time however this period is not defined by ofsted
d) the crb check is relevant to the current setting, so for eg, if you employ an assistant with a crb with another employers addy on it, it will need re-doing before they can be left alone.
e) I'm also sure i read somewhere in the standards that assistants should also have at least basic safeguarding as well.

keeleybooboo bloody complicated is an understatement