Our News 2024 â˘â˘ 2nd Edition
We hope that everyone in our village has enjoyed the last couple of weeks including Easter and school holidays for some of you, which we hope were full of smiles and fabulous family moments! Weâre ready to jump into Term 2, and as you will see in our program down below, weâre in for another busy couple of months and our house is going to be full of all the moments in time that keep us smiling, thinking, exploring, creating, imagining and totally loving life!
Kindy Kids
If your Small Friend is booked in for the Flexi booking option we make available to Kindy families only, we need a little help with the 2024 calendar pattern that some schools are choosing to change each term.
Please be aware that the spots we offer are based on your Small Friendâs booking pattern starting from the beginning in Term 1 and running every second week for the rest of the year, school holidays included. However, for the first time since offering this booking option weâve come up against schools changing the classroom pattern at the beginning of Term 2, a change that doesnât help us out since we âmatch upâ your Small Friendâs Flexi booking with another Kindy Small Friend, or we get into the year and we actually offer the âmatch upâ booking to a younger Small Friend. These âmatch upâsâ help to ensure we fill our vacancies, which of course wonât work for you family if we get towards the end of the year and weâre a full house and will not be able to swap your Small Friendâs date at the beginning of a school term.
If youâre a Kindy family we ask that you please make contact with your school within the next couple of weeks to confirm the dates for your Small Friend for the rest of 2024, and let Tassj know the planned calendar by email so that we can make sure we can help you out if your school decides to change classroom dates in Term 3 and/or Term 4. We cannot contact your school on your behalf, so please ensure you get this one done for us in the next fortnight so that we can make sure we have a plan in place for the rest of this year. If your school administration does not wish to assist with this query, please point out to them that you may well not be able to access child care if they continue to switch dates around at the beginning of each term.
Those UVâs Are Still With Us!
We know weâre nagging but we really would love to be able work as a village to ensure that our Small Friends are all good when it comes to being in SunSmart mode before they ring the bell each morning. Weâve had days over the last fortnight where a few too many of our housemates havenât had that first application âslappedâ on so could you please add this To Do to your morning routine.
At this stage we totally appreciate those in our village who have forgotten, and youâve all been using our sunscreen to apply a layer to their Small Friend before they say Seeya. However when itâs a busy part of morning some of you may have noticed that we end up with a bit of a traffic jam so please donât take offence if you see our sunscreen bottle relocated just outside our front door as being inside the foyer is not always helping with the traffic flow of a morning.
Booking Reminders
Swaps While we have room in the house this option is available, however the flexibility to swap your Small Friendâs days comes with some house rules that we need everyone to follow :
Please do not use Xplor Home Booking Requests to request a swap.
Email your request with a minimum of 48 hours notice. Sending us an email on the weekend does not count as notice for a swap request for a Monday or Tuesday.
A swap can be to a day within a week of the date requested, no longer.
Extra Days All extra day booking requests need to be done via your Xplor Home app. If youâre unsure of how to do this one, or youâve had trouble with it in the past please Tap Here to head to our how to video. Please also remember that we do not allow for make up days in our world and all days of absence whether they be for holidays or sickness are charged.
Catching Up With Us
With a busy house comes our plan to ensure we can give all our attention to our Small Friends through the day, and to also make sure we can get all the behind the scenes jobs sorted that keep our world turning. With this in mind could you please take note of the best ways to catch up with us.
Chat @ Pick Up Time Our mornings are the busiest with everyone getting their Seeya Laters in, unpacking bags and getting ready for the day, so catching up with us at this time doesnât quite work for our Small Friends when this is the time that they are ready to seek out their Teachers to help them to get started on their day of adventure!
If you need to check in with us about your Small Friendâs day, booking queries, our program, etc, please let us know at Pick Up time preferably before one of us heads into the house to seek out your Small Friend. Alternatively please feel free to drop us an email and weâll reply and touch base with you as soon as we can.
Account Queries When it comes to managing the family budget Natassja prefers to have a message thread between herself and our villagers so that everyone is on the same page when it comes to this part of our day. So if you have any account queries such as questions about your fees and the CCS please email her at ourteam@smallfriendsfalcon.com.au, and sheâll get back to you as soon as she can.
Remember that we as your Service Provider have no control over your CCS eligibility and you need to be aware that Centrelink will stop your payments if your income activity is not up to date, or your Small Friend is late in having their immunisations. Should your CCS payments be switched off, you will need to pay full fees from the date Centrelink has allocated. From other families experiences, when this action occurs you may end up owing $100âs to $1000âs in fees to us as your Service Provider, since Centrelink expect us to collect on the CCS payments they choose to revoke. To avoid this situation please be on top of your myGov commitments at all times.
Watching The Time
Running Late This is not a part of our admin To Doâs that we wish to highlight, but we do need to point out that some of us are not keeping an eye on the clock to make sure your Small Friend is collected on time, whether it be 12pm for the end of our morning session, or 5pm for the end of our day. Being late for morning pick up creates a âsnowballâ effect for our afternoon program and routine, so we need for you to ensure that arrive by 12pm. The regulation closing time for our world is 5pm, so picking up after this time is actually against our hours of operations policy. Please note the following with regard to our Late Collection FeesâŚ
While we understand that circumstances can affect your planned pick up time, it is expected that everyone in our village do all that they can to collect their Small Friend on time, especially if they are booked in for a full day.
If you are delayed due to unavoidable circumstances we ask that you call us to notify us of the time you will be at our front door, please do not email or send through a Facebook message. If we have not been contacted we will attempt to contact both parents and emergency contacts, and if contact cannot be made with the contacts listed on your Small Friendâs enrolment details then we will need to contact the Police.
Even when notice is given of a late pick up time, if you continue to be tardy Natassja will email a reminder to you to request that you not be late on any further dates. Past this reminder if further lateness occurs then you will incur late fee charges charged at $25 for the first 10 minutes then, $15 every 10 minutes or part thereof.
Again pointing out negatives is something we do not wish to do, but we would greatly appreciate it if you could all please be aware of this particular part of our day so as to avoid Tassj having to send out âgrumpyâ emails.
Absences Please use your Xplor Home app to let us know if your Small Friend is going to be away or late. Our Master Roll will be marked by 10am each morning, so if we havenât heard from you by this time your Small Friend will be marked absent. All absences whether they be for sickness or holiday are charged, so please do not ask for make up days. This option has never been part of our fee paying policy.
If your Small Friend is going to be away for more than 3 weeks either for a holiday, or maybe theyâre going to be recuperating from a medical procedure, you can request an enrolment suspension. This request needs to be put in writing to Natassja for her consideration, and if she approves a suspension of your Small Friendâs enrolment their bookings will remain on our roll and marked as âHolidaysâ, but at Natassjaâs discretion fees will not be charged for the dates youâve requested. Only one enrolment suspension can be requested within each 12 month period of enrolment.
*:⢠Your Small Friends Team â˘:*
