Overbooking rooms

[Hayleybrown]

Hi, my room is licensed for 15 children a day, 2-3. Our ratio is 5 children to 1 staff member.

They have been overbooking our room lately, some days we have 18 children. They don’t see this as a problem as they give the room an extra staff member.

Our room resembles an industrial chicken farm, it’s just simply not big enough to hold that amount of children. We have to borrow beds from other rooms at rest times. Can they actually do legally do this, despite the fact they give us an extra staff member so we are in ratio.

We had 17 children in a room one day. A family came in for a tour... “we have up to 15 children in this room per day”, said the director.

[Lorina]

As far as I understand with licensing it has to do with the overall service, not the individual rooms. For example, a service can be licensed for 30 children, so they cannot exceed 30 children on any given day (they can during extreme unavoidable circumstances which they need to inform the regulatory authorities about). So, the 30 children can be divided up into their respective age groups and as long as you are in ratio, then the service is covered.

However, if you feel that the room is too small then you probably need to shuffle the children around, get them into smaller groups between the Educators to try and manage what little space you have. Can you create a free-flowing program enabling children to go indoors and out throughout the day? Do you have an outdoor verandah that can be used or shaded space?

Have you discussed this with your Director? Letting them know it's difficult to engage the children in activities with the limited space provided?

Can the older children move up into the older room?

You have a couple of options to consider...

,
Lorina