QA4 Staffing Arrangements

Strengths

Roster by Term

One of the things that is valued highly at our OSHC is that our rosters are done by term. This allows educators to plan 3 months ahead. This ensures continuity of staff and familiarises educators with children that attend on their days.

Further it promotes our value of responsibility to our Educators as they are the ones who have to get their shifts covered if they cannot attend one.

Staff Meetings

9 staff meetings are held each year. A minimum of 2 each term with 3 in Term 1.

These are an important time for critical reflection for our service. During this time our behaviour book and observation book entries are discussed to ensure we continue to identify best practice.

In addition to these general staff meetings we also have weekly management meetings which are discussed in the next section.

Management Meetings

Weekly management meetings are attended by only qualified staff members, permanent staff members and the educational leader. These meetings are used to refine practice and discuss OSHC issues in greater detail than might be discussed during general staff meetings.

Inclusion Support Funding

Maggie is our allocated Inclusion Support Funding Person.

She works hard at ensuring our children who require extra support, are provided with every opportunity to fully engage and participate in our service by having the appropriate levels of support.

Maggie partners with GowrieSA to explore the barriers in our service, and ways to support the children to thrive at OSHC. Some examples of changes that have been made to accommodate for all children in our environment include adapting our physical environment to support children's regulation (sensory space, calm basket), accessing funding for an additional educator to support children on the floor and promote relationship building and modelling amongst the service, and exploring opportunities for training and upskilling staff (currently, we are working with AutismSA and Gowrie to access funding for all staff to participate in a training program throguh AutismSA.

Diverse Tertiary Backgrounds

The staff at OSHC have a diverse range of tertiary education and post school experiences. Many are currently studying primary or secondary education, but some have background in sporting, allied health, sciences and support work.

We believe this range of experience, knowledge and skills across our staff is beneficial to the children's time at OSHC as they are exposed to range of different activities, new ideas and a range of personalities for children to connect to.

Some examples of staff putting their backgrounds to use are:

Different sporting activities in vacation care and outside time including but not limited to, soccer, football, tennis, varieties of dodgeball and other novelty games
Science and nature experiments
Helping unregulated students regulate with a range of strategies
Running and facilitating clubs including gardening, cooking and dance

Staff Newsletter

Each month one of our Educators produces a staff newsletter. This provides a wonderful tool for staying connected and updated with all things OSHC. It also provides the Educators with a snap shot on how the OSHC is performing numbers wise and financially.

We use this as a tool to ensure that all our Educators stay connected no matter how many shifts they get or if they are away on placements etc.

Educator Workbooks

Qualified Educator Workbook and Learning Plan pdf.pdf

There are two types of workbooks that Educators work from. There is a qualified workbook which includes more advanced tasks and an Educator workbook. The workbook covers supervision, booking system knowledge, food safety and NQF and MTOP knowledge.

There is also a section that asks Educators what their goals are. This is then used to shape a learning plan for them during their OSHC time.

Celebrating Staff

Staff well-being is important at our OSHC. We acknowledge each other's contributions through a staff nomination book. Each staff meeting the nominations are randomly generated and a staff member of the month is elected.

Further we celebrate each other's birthdays, personal accomplishments such as finishing placements and their final days at OSHC.

We also share photos of our staff contribution to each vac care day.