Buddy/befriender work - cost

[inappropriatelyemployed]

Anyone got any idea about how much you would pay hourly for buddy/befriender?

We are trying to cost out a package.

Hampshire does the Community Buddy scheme. £5 per hour to be paid by the parent, plus cost of any activity undertaken. I haven't got sources, but I think the hourly rate of somewhere like Smile Support and Care is something like £15 per hour.

NAS run befriender services you could contact them and ask what to put.

Our DP carer is from a care agency and the agency charges £16 per hour

Great guys thanks!

Hope your LA meeting went well yesterday and you kicked butts! I was thinking of you when I was in our breaks.

Thanks Towie. It was ok. Everyone agreed bar LA as LA Ed Officer needed to 'report back' which is usually code for trying to find a way to unpick things.

Any idea how I can cost out Travel over the year to support social activities or educational resources and materials?

Shall I just pick a figure?

Also - not sure how many hours to go for tutor wise.

Do you just mean purely travel (eg mileage/petrol & train/bus fares)? If so, could you work out individual mileages to a variety of places and then cost it out at the same rate-per-mile the LA uses refunds parents in certain cases when parents transport children to school (my LA does 45p per mile). That would give you a reasonable break-down of mileage to several different places (Hope that makes sense!)

Are you going for a full week with tutors, or tutors to supplement what you're doing?

Thanks I am thinking of asking for about £15 per week as an average travel wise.

We were going to ask for about 15 hours with tutors but I think it might be too much as DS is a good independent worker if set homework and he generally just works 9-12. So I thought 12.

So how would you split the 12 hours? Would you do 2 hours a day with tutor (ie 10 hours per week 1:1 tuition) and then 30 mins a day for the tutor to prepare lesson-plans/homework? If so, that seems reasonable

(Sorry having spent yesterday splitting up hours into the minutest of minutes, I appear to have become obsessed with absolute preciseness!)

One thing from my own home ed time, is that we've always kept every Friday free from tutors so that we can go and do things together - eg day trips to museums, battlefields, castles, nature etc.

Yes, that what I was thinking! A day free to do trips!

I think the hours would be 1:1 tutor time as I think they factor in the preparation etc in their rate.

I was thinking 10 hours: 2 days of 3 hours and 2 of 2. But then I thought a few extra hours for may be a language or something.

Solicitors said put 15 so we did but not sure he could take that at the moment.

Put in extra time for the teacher to lesson plan, mark homework, and liaise/feedback with you. We were fighting over exactly that issue at one point yesterday!

Apart from anything, it'll give you a negotiating point, so if LA say you've done too much, you can drop the extra time.

Do you think I should go for 15 then? Did they accept the time for planning etc?

Go into precise detail as to how you've got to 15 hours. Don't just give them 15 hours as one figure. Break it down into all its components and inc lesson planning/liaison. As you will be continuing the home ed on your own, the tutors will need to liaise a lot with you so you all know what your doing/don't repeat work/can check progress etc etc.

Won't know for 10 days if panel accepted (out of the LAs hands to decide now ), but it seemed totally reasonable as we had it all broken down into tiny detail and could totally explain the larger hourly numbers.

Same for your trips/mileage. Break it totally down. Much harder to argue over if every single penny has been totally accounted for

You don't have something I could look at do you?