Hello!

Hi, my name is Vicky McBride. I am the Managing Director of Out of Hours Kids’ Club.

Thank you for visiting our site. I hope you will find the information of interest, in your quest for quality child care provision, or training courses, delivered at our accredited training centre. If your questions are not covered on this site, please feel free to contact me via the Contact Us page.

Our Company was formed in January 1995, and over the last 14 years we have developed and established nine breakfast and after school clubs mainly in the south of Liverpool, UK. Our clubs are based within excellent primary schools, where children from those schools attend the clubs located within the school, or school grounds. As usual, there are always exceptions! The exceptions in this case are where we pick up from one school, and take the children to another of our sites, and at one school where we have breakfast club within the school but after school children crocodile to another nearby. Please follow the Sites link for our service at schools.

Our aim is to provide the best service to our children, parents/carers and schools where we operate. In addition to this, we have a responsibility to provide quality training to our staff. Our staff is one of our best assets and we strive to keep consistent and qualified teams at our locations. We value playwork, and actively promote the skills necessary to provide a quality service. We operate family friendly policies, and promote the value of the excellent work that the playworkers provide.

Eight of our nine clubs have achieved 4 children Quality Assurance scheme called ‘Aiming High’ – Bishop Eton club opened after the others had achieved, however this club operates to the QA standards). ALL of our sites are now committed to the latest QA scheme called ‘Aiming Higher’ Due to time restraints and costs; we are starting with 3 sites – Dovedale, Mosspits and Runnymede St.Edward’s. It is anticipated that the first three sites will achieve prior to the end of the summer term 2008. The next three sites will commence in September 2008, and the final three in January 2009.

All settings are Ofsted registered and inspected.

Our Admin Centre employs 5 full-time members of staff who are available to take messages for site, help with the registration process, plan and prepare activities and ensure the essential paperwork is up to date for our governing bodies like the CRB (Criminal Records Bureau) and OFSTED (the Office for Standards in Education, responsible for regulating day care and childminding and inspecting the quality of funded nursery education).  We recruit staff centrally and candidates go through a thorough process of written test and oral questions, CRB checks and staff induction.  Although Ofsted itself no longer assesses the suitability of day care staff, they will assess how well we make decisions about the suitability of our staff during their regular inspections of day-care providers. As part of the inspection, the childcare inspector will look for evidence that we have secure procedures for vetting and recruiting staff and that any person who has not been vetted is never left alone with the children.

Our staff work on a 1:8 ratio across our 4-12 age range, this ratio is required by OFSTED for the under 8’s only.  Across the sites our staff range in age from 18 – 60 years of age, we employ male and female staff with different social and cultural backgrounds.  The children are encouraged to participate in a wide range of play opportunities; free play includes: construction with lego, duplo, blocks, stickle bricks and popoids, dressing up clothes and role play areas, quieter areas with reading and tapes or c.d’s, art & craft table with free painting, drawing or colouring and in addition structured art & craft sessions and outdoor play activities.  We try to involve the children in the planning and preparation of snack and often use this as a cookery club activity.  More information regarding site specifics can be found on our Site pages.

I am passionate about providing good quality provision. We are only able to operate within schools by working as a team with the schools, and the children and parents know that they can approach us with suggestions and comments when they can.

Our hope is that the children see us as part of their extended family for the period of their time with us. Many children who were with us at the start fourteen years ago are now adults. We see them and their parents at various times and are often delighted with their memories of Kids’ Club. We have continued dealings with some of the children during work experience at the age of fourteen, and some actually have come back to work with us!