The good news this week is that Tuition Canterbury is now registered with Ofsted as an approved childcare provider. What this means is that while the tuition programmes remain the same, parents eligible for Working Tax Credit who enrol their child (or children) at the Centre may henceforth claim the childcare element against fees. The refund is 70% - in other words £19.25 of the current £27.50 fee per session will be repaid.      

Definitive information on the scheme is available from the HMRC website. The following leaflets WTC1 'Child Tax Credit and Working Tax Credit - an Introduction'; and WTC5 'Help with the costs of childcare' contain full details.       

  

The last two Saturdays I have been a classroom  learner again. As part of the process of making Tuition Canterbury an 'Ofsted registered' centre (more on this in later posts) I have had to qualify myself as a provider of First Aid. This has involved going along, with 6 others in the childcare sector, to a class in 'Paediatric First Aid for Child Carers' in Ashford, and learning  - or at least getting better aquainted with - the basics of responding to a First Aid emergency. Last week we were primarily dealing with the patient who has stopped breathing - ie. requires resuscitation; or is breathing but unconscious - and so may need placing  into the recovery position. Yesterday, apart from revising those procedures, we considered seizures and burns and amputations and electric shock: we also practised simple ways of making a sling from a triangular bandage.
 
There is no written exam, which in way was a disappointment; I think I would like to have had a follow-up test after, say, a month. But as they are, these courses are expensive to provide and to attend, so I should perhaps not wish for things that would add to cost. 

We were issued a booklet Paediatric First Aid Made Easy, about the size and length of the Highway Code, and equivalent in level of difficulty (roughly) to a core GCSE revision guide. This will be my reference for the next three years (after which I shall have to take a refresher course); I hope it will be only for reference, and not be needed as an instant handbook.