Have a good break!

Excellent Achievements in OSC

• Oldmachar Out of School Clubs Ltd were part of the pilot for the validation inspections for highly performing services carried out by the Care Inspectorate recently. They have done brilliantly and have maintained their 6s across the board and indeed continue to make improvements.
• Congratulations to Penny Anderson from MACS for being featured in the SSSC lead practitioner examples. You can download the case study here
• Congratulations to Broomhill Out of School Care Association (BOSCA) on achieving Investors in Young People Gold Accreditation- the first OSC in Scotland to do so.

  The team at BOSCA receive their award

  You can read more about their achievement on the SOSCN facebook page and find out more about investors in young people at their website: investorsinyoungpeople.scot
• Dunard Afterschool Care has featured in a Care Inspectorate Hub good practice video. You can watch the video here

Quality Improvement Awards

Organised by the Scottish Government, the Quality Improvement Awards (2016) will celebrate the improvement work of practitioners in services that deliver throughout the child’s journey. The awards will be aimed at those practitioners who have used improvement methodology to explore and deliver better ways of working to improve outcomes for children, young people and families.

Nominations can come from those involved in the Maternity and Children's Quality Improvement Collaborative (MCQIC), the Early Years Collaborative (EYC) and Raising Attainment for All programme (RAFA) and others who use quality improvement (QI) to improve services for children and families across Scotland.

The Awards will open early in May 2016 when further information about the award categories and application process will also be released.

New National Living Wage - April 2016

Not to be confused with the Official Living Wage movement (which is a recommended rate) (£8.25 per hour from October 2015), from April 2016, the new legal National Living Wage will be £7.20 an hour for workers aged 25 and older. The minimum wage will still apply for workers aged 24 and under.

The new minimum wage rates are as follows:

• Year
• 25 and over
• 21 to 24
• 18 to 20
• Under 18
• Apprentice

• From April 2016
• £7.20
• £6.70
• £5.30
• £3.87
• £3.30

• From October 2016
• £6.95
• £5.55
• £4.00
• £3.40

You can find out more about pay and pay-scales at this link SOSCN pay-scales recommendations

GIRFEC Training Update

Since the start of the new year SOSCN has delivered 5 GIRFEC training sessions in North Lanarkshire (2 sessions), Glasgow, Aberdeenshire and Dundee to 35 services having a total reach of 2699 children and 2098 families.

This training still proves to be very popular and valued with feedback consistently being 'excellent' or 'very good'. The training has been further developed in recent weeks in line with updated information and guidance now available (see below).

• "Excellent training- lots of ideas and new info."
• "Learned a great deal about the SHANARRI wheel and putting forms in place."

Getting it Right for Every Child update

There have been a number of recent publications and resources which have been published to assist services in supporting the delivery of GIRFEC in day-to-day practice:

GIRFEC in your local area

The Scottish Government has created a web page with links to each local authorities GIRFEC pages. It is vital that services are aware of what is happening locally in terms of the roll-out of GIRFEC.

Find yours here: GIRFEC in My Area

GIRFEC Third Sector Touchpoint Document

This document is of use to all out of school care services (including those not within the voluntary sector) and has checklists and processes for ensuring services are ready and able to deliver GIRFEC.

Touchpoint 1 covers

• Assessing the wellbeing of children
• Identifying a wellbeing concern
• Recording a wellbeing concern

Touchpoint 2 covers

• Communicating with the Named Person service
• Information sharing

Access the document here

We recommend that services access both the above resources to ensure they are 'GIRFEC ready'.



Achieving Quality Scotland (AQS) Mentoring Update

Since the start of the new year we have delivered AQS mentoring sessions and support to 11 services in Glasgow and 1 in Renfrewshire; we are now also working with out of school care services delivered by the local authority in Highland.

find out more about AQS



Meet the Regulator Events

These events proved to be very popular with several of them full to capacity. Over the course of 5 months (Nov 2015 – March 2016) we delivered 5 events in Aberdeen, Glasgow, Irvine, Edinburgh and Perth in partnership with the SSSC, Care Inspectorate and Disclosure Scotland.

The events were well-received and delegates appreciated the opportunity of hearing up-to-date information and also being able to have a dialogue with the regulators.

A full report will be shortly available from the events and we shall look at ways of being able to deliver similar opportunities in the future.



Free Online CPD/PRTL Training Opportunities

There are 2 free online training courses delivered through Future Learn which are relevant to out of school care services:

Exploring Play: The Importance of Play in Everyday Life

Understanding the nature and value of play through the course of our lives, across cultures and communities.

Delivered by University of Sheffield. Start date is to be announced but you can register your interest in participating.

www.futurelearn.com/courses/play

Childhood in the Digital Age

Delve into the lives of children and discuss the potential benefits and limitations of technology in their lives.

Delivered by the Open University. Starts 2nd May, participants can sign-up now.

www.futurelearn.com/courses/childhood-in-the-digital-age



SSSC Updates

• New Common Core of Skills, Knowledge and Values: http://ssscnews.uk.com/?p=7621
• Changes to our Registration Rules: http://ssscnews.uk.com/?p=7605


My world outdoors- early years good practice 2016

This is a great new resource from the Care Inspectorate. looks at the benefits of outdoor play and activities for children within childcare services. The publication shows how outdoor activities support the wellbeing of children through the SHANARRI indicators, and it also provides examples of good practice from out of school care services as well as nurseries and childminders.

download the publication



Scottish Government Consultation on Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014

This consultation seeks your views on a) non-statutory guidance for Part 1 (section 2) of the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014, which cover duties on each public authority named in the Act to publish a report every 3 years on steps it has taken to give better or further effect within its areas of responsibility to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child 1989 (UNCRC) requirements, and b)statutory guidance for Part 3 of the Act which covers arrangements for children's services planning – purpose, requirements, process, reporting and review.

Participate in the consultation here

The consultation closes 13th Jun 2016.



Quality Improvement Award

Here you can access a letter from Aileen Campbell, Minister for Children and Young People in a new award for outstanding examples of evidence based quality improvement.



Policy, Research and Consultation

SOSCN is a member of the Minister led national Early Learning and Childcare (ELC) Strategic Forum which includes out of school care and this was on the agenda for the first meeting of this group. SOSCN is also on the two sub groups related to this Forum, the Workforce and Quality Group and the Strategic Evidence Group. In all of these groups we contribute views and submit research and evidence relating to our field. We also attended the national ELC summit on the 1140 hours trials.

Please click the following links to see some recent reports on SOSCN work:

• Learning About Play (I. Audain and A. Shoolbread)

  This is a large information report with highly detailed appendices, as it looked at the contents of all qualifications in the wider early learning and childcare, out of school care and teaching, at every level. We recommend that, to save you ploughing through it all, the executive summary gives you a good overview, while the literature review and play training provider sections might be of direct interest to out of school care.

• 1140 Hours trials consultation response
• Out of School Care Views from the Field
• Summary Children's Holiday Club Survey

All of the above reports have been used in SOSCN evidence submissions for policy development, so thanks to all of you involved in helping with all of this research work. It is really important you help us with surveys and research as this gathers the evidence we need to argue for out of school care development.

UK Policy

The recent budget papers mentioned that the rolling out of the new childcare voucher scheme scheme from January 2017 will be gradual and open to parents of the youngest children first. This might mean that help with school age childcare costs won’t be in place until later that year. SOSCN will monitor for any news about this on your behalf.



Physical Activity Training



some recent participants

SOSCN's free physical activity and wellbeing training has been proving to be a great success and very much enjoyed by those who have participated. If you have not already taken part then please see this link: SOSCN Physical Activity and Wellbeing Training.



SOSCN's Information Downloads

Some of you have been asking where some of our resources are on the new website. Here are direct links to those you have been asking about:

• parent's guide to out of school care
• children’s guide to out of school care
• children’s guide to the UNCRC
• SOSCN research publications and workforce surveys
• SOSCN consultations and reports