One of the questions we are most often asked at Ironside OHSC is, “Why can’t you just make more places available at OSHC so there doesn’t need to be a waitlist?”, “If the school can have hundreds of children during the day why are you only taking 195?”
On the face of it, these are valid and sensible questions so I would like to help you understand why there are no simple answers to the capacity problem at Ironside OSHC.
It’s the Law…
The Early Childhood and Community Engagement division within the Department of Education is responsible for approving and regulating services under the Education and Care Services National Law (Queensland) Act 2011. This is different to the legislation that State Schools are governed by. There are much more stringent standards that need to be met regarding the space per child in an Outside School Hours Care (OSHC) setting than there are for State Schools. At Ironside OSHC, we are required to provide at least 3.25 square metres of unencumbered indoor space and at least 7 square metres of unencumbered outdoor space for each child being educated and cared for at the service.
Take a moment to think about that. The room that you enter to sign out your child everyday has the capacity to legally accomodate no more than 18 children. Amazing. Isn’t it?
At the moment, the school has made available all of the unencumbered space they have to give. We already share 3 rooms that are used as teaching spaces at Ironside State School during school hours.
In addition, not only do these spaces need to be unencumbered, they also need to be available for the sole use of the OSHC service during its hours of operation.
It isn’t just about space for the kids …
We also need space for toys and equipment. National Regulation 105 states that “each child must have access to sufficient furniture, materials and developmentally appropriate equipment suitable for the education and care of that child”. That’s a lot of stuff! Think about the amount of space taken up in your house just by the toys of your children. Now multiply that by 195. Obviously, children can share resources but we still have to store, set up, and set down a mountain of equipment every day. Ironside State School have provided us with all the spare storage space they have. We are continually working with the school to innovate better ways of working with the space we have.
It can’t be THAT hard to store a bit of paper, glue, paint and sports stuff …..
OSHC care services are also required to have a very wide variety of suitable educational materials on hand. This is so we can meet the standards set out in the legislated educational framework for OSHC; My Time, Our Place. So, we are managing everything from cooking equipment and circuit boards, to parachutes and cubby house building equipment.
Why can’t you use other sites like the local church halls?
We have enquired with the facilities local to the school. However, even if they had the availability for us to use their spaces at the times required, they would need some potentially costly changes in order to make them compliant with the requirements under the legislation.
Wouldn’t a third party provider fix it ….?
A third party provider will have the exact same access to the spaces as the P & C run Ironside OSHC does. Nothing will change in terms of increasing capacity by bringing in a third party provider.
We have been working hard in the background …
Both the Department of Education – ECEC and Educational Queensland representatives have visited the service and school to try and find solutions to this problem. Thanks to the hard work and advocacy of Grace Grace, Mr Johnson, The ICASAG Parent Committees, Micheal Birkman, and the current P & C Executive, more OSHC places will be made available at a new purpose built childcare facility on the grounds of the University of Queensland. The Playhouse childcare centre will bus students to and from Ironside State School to help relieve some of the pressure that space constraints are putting on our community currently. When they are ready we will help Playhouse distribute information on how to access that service.
What is the long term solution?
There is currently a study and review underway looking at the space requirements legislated for OSHC services. Hopefully, that process will result in some long term relief for the sector.
What can you do to help?
- Assume that the Ironside OSHC Management, Staff and Ironside State School P & C are continually looking for ways to improve the service and increase access to care, within the requirements of the legislation.
- Get involved with P & C meetings so that you can hear what is happening with the strategic planning for the school and Ironside OSHC.
- Stop applying constant and undue pressure to the staff at Ironside OSHC about space constraints. We are doing all we can and we work hard to try and make as many spaces available to as many people as we can, every day.
- Write to your state and federal members of parliament about the pressures of finding care for school aged children. This problem requires legislative change to be fixed in the long term. Our politicians can only understand the intensity of the problem if YOU tell them.
- Keep your notifications of absences timely. When we can make those spaces available early, casual users of the service are able to snap them up. If you notify us of a planned absence more than two weeks in advance, we will even remove the charge for that booking.
Complex problems take time to fix…
Let’s remember that we are all working together to find a solution that will result in care-certainty for you, as well as meaningful play, leisure, and education for your children.