Gold Award for Loanhead After School Care

Loanhead After School Care (LASC) has become the first after school club in Scotland to gain the Healthy Working Lives gold award. The club has been participating in the scheme for 6 years and Irene Hogg, general manager of LASC said,

"We are delighted to have achieved the HWL gold award. Our organisation believes investing in our staff's well-being is vital to our success, as they are our most important asset."

"We have worked our way through the scheme by achieving our bronze and sliver awards, and to now finally gain the gold is a tremendous achievement for a small organisation like ours, who are the first after school club in Scotland to gain this accolade."

Congratulations to LASC for this fantastic achievement.

Further information: Healthy Working Lives

Election Time- May 2011

Ask local MSP candidates how they pledge to support out of school care

We encourage you to use the Benefits of Out of School Care film and manifesto locally to remind your prospective MSPs about the value of out of school care. You could organise a local event to invite candidates, show the film and use the manifesto as a starting point for discussion. You might want to do this with your local OSC forum or network, if you have one, or gather together services in one area to organise it, if you do not.

If you organise a local “hustings” event you must make sure to invite candidates from all political parties and give everyone the same time to put forward their views and take questions. It should not turn into an event for one party alone. Since a lot of these events need advance timing you would need to work quickly to get a venue, publicity and of course, to ensure your local candidates can attend before the election. You are also welcome to take copies of the SOSCN manifesto to other hustings events already organised in your area.

Even if you cannot organise an event you can find out the name of contact details of your local candidates and email or write to them, sending the links with our film and manifesto and ask them to give you, as their constituents, information on their plans to support out of school care in your area.

Do please copy their replies to us, if you can. Neither activity will take much time, but both would really help in ensuring we all keep out of school care on the
map. With cuts across the board it is vital everyone plays their part, however small, in making the case for our services. Remember of course, this is not party political activity, but taking the opportunity to find out all candidates views on school age childcare locally.

Even after the election, once you know who has been appointed as your list MSP and your regional MSP, you could contact them with the SOSCN materials and information on your own service to arrange a visit (when you could show the film).

The most powerful people for influencing prospective MSPs are you; the local services, parents, children, staff and volunteers. The short film is not only useful in this way but as a promotional tool, in the future, at other events, conferences, and parents’ evenings and such like; basically anywhere you are promoting, explaining or marketing school age childcare. So please do download and use it wherever you can.

FIND YOUR LOCAL ELECTION CANDIDATES
www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/election2011/overview/html/scotland.stm

Benefits of Out of School Care Video

In December last year, Irene decided that SOSCN should make a video asking children, staff and parents about the benefits of out of school care. Despite having very limited experience and nothing other than a borrowed cheap home video camera Finlay and I visited 2 clubs: JOSS in Glasgow and SCOOSH in Edinburgh, and we took over four hours-worth of footage. Somehow I managed to edit this into a 13 minute video which is available below, unfortunately there was a lot of excellent footage that we just couldn't fit in this time round.

This video was made with few financial resources; the largest expense was probably two return train tickets to Edinburgh. It is hoped that you not only enjoy this video but that you also use it to promote out of school care in your local area to parents, teachers, local authorities, MSPs, MPs...everyone!

Enjoy

Andrew

Joining the dots

Joining the dots: A better start for Scotland’s Children.
An Independent Reportby Prof Susan Deacon of University of Edinburgh

An independent report focusing on children and the early years in Scotland and written by Professor Susan Deacon of the University of Edinburgh, was launched on 2nd of March 2010. The report entitled “Joining the dots: A better start for Scotland’s Children” is a “report about children’s Early Years - why they matter and how we can improve them... It is about the kind of Scotland we want to live in. The kind of society we are and aspire to be.“

Joining the Dots (pdf)