Parent rota- How do you do it?

[Ripeberry]

Our pre-school seems to have a bunch of parents who just don't want to help out as they need the time that their child is attending a session to do their "things".
I'm certainly NOT talking about working parents or parents with other very young children.
Out of 15 children 10 of them are parents who do not work, but trying to get them to put their name on the rota is a nightmare.
In our county we are NOT allowed to make up a rota and we can't charge the parents to get someone in to help.
It has to be voluntuary, problem is too many people think that means someone else will do it.
Yesterday was the crunch point when 7 of the parents who don't work were standing around almost arguing with each other as to who was going to stay and help.
They all just then decided to not put their children in that day and went home!"
Yes, we are the committee and the pre-school leader were pretty disgusted as well.
I'm in the process of writting a pretty stiff letter to the parents about it and to say that if they don't help then the fees WILL have to go up for everyone and in the end it will affect the working parents more (my view) as they would like to help but they can't and most of them don't even have familly nearby, they rely on the pre-school for childcare.
Do any other pre-schools have this problem and is your county council as bonkers as ours?
Sorry bit of a rant but i'm soo angry!

I think you need to sit down and look at your fees and your costs. If you cannot afford the correct number of staff per children then something is wrong whether it be overspending or not charging enough.

Is there anyone on the committee with a finance/business background?

Panda G - this is a link to the EPPE report www.ioe.ac.uk/cdl/eppe/pdfs/eppe_brief2503.pdf - although you could probably Google it and find out more.

Just had to re read everyones posts on this thread because we are having real problems with parent rota and I'm seriously contemplating hiring a fourth member of staff.

We have three staff at present and rely on a parent helper for every session to ensure correct ratios. But getting parents to stay is almost impossible at the moment. We only charge £5.00 for a 2.5hr session and have told parents that we would need to increase fees to employ a fourth member of staff - this didn't go down well with parents and for a little while we did get an increase in parent helpers. But we were soon facing same old problem!

Also, I found out yesterday from our Development Worker that all parent helpers must be CRB checked if they are included in the ratios.

Just wondering what other pre schools who don't have a parent rota charge per session and what hourly rates you pay staff?

I'm a bit [shocked) about the CRB checks! As on the rotas we say that a grandparent or other relative can come in to help if the parent cant. But of course that person is mainly there to help with the setting up, washing up and general running.
They are never left unsupervised with a child.

We are allowed up to 18 but I the busiest day is 16 at the moment. We have 3 members of staff and pay a leader, deputy and one member of staff. Our charges are 9.50 (non funded) for a three hour session and the funded children pay 3.25 for the extra 1/2 hr. Our room hire is £15.

We have more or less given up on parent helpers - we used to have them on our busy days but it was such a nightmare for our secretary with people swopping and dropping out that we have given up.

Can you fund raise with a big event like a Curry and Quiz night etc to raise funds to cover an extra member of staff? Get the people who can't help to organise an event instead? Otherwise it's the same few people doing everything.

It sounds to me that parents do not realise what your group does.

They may just be under the impression it is just a cheap nursery.

I agree with others - you need to start a formal signup process as condition of joining.

I also do not understand why working parents do not need to help out.

A betadad, working parents feel that if they are asked to come in and help in a pre-school that we have to pay THEM for loss of earnings as there is no way that they will use some of their holiday

Problem is that lots of the parents that work in our pre-school are self-employed and everyone knows what workaholics they are.