Deciding whether or not to have childcare/creche for your event? Questions that you should ask.
Organising an event is never easy. There are lots of things that you need to think about and consider before you go ahead and book everything. Things get even more complicated when you are considering offering childcare to those people who are attending your event.
To try and help make things a little bit easier for you, we have put together our guide to the questions to ask yourself before deciding whether or not childcare is going to be right for your event.
Is there a large enough space within the venue for a children creche?
One of the first things that you need to think about is whether or not the venue is suitable for having a mobile creche within it. The most important thing is that there is enough space within the venue to house a creche. We suggest that there should be a minimum of 3.5m square per child under the age of two, at least 2.5m square per child aged two or at least 2.3m square per child aged three to seven and above. It is always best if there is plenty of natural light too.
Aside from the space, you will also need to consider whether or not the location of the creche is far enough away from the event itself, else you could end up with noise complaints thanks to all those excited children.
Is the venue going to be open for set up and clean down?
Setting up a creche, and then tidying up afterwards takes time, around 2 hours for each. Which means that when you are deciding whether or not to organise childcare for your event, you need to speak to your venue whether or not the childcare company are going to be able to access the space outside of the times of the event.
Are the venue staff aware of the rules and regulations?
Whilst you cannot expect the venue staff to learn everything about looking after children and safeguarding, they should be aware of what you need from them in order to keep the kids safe. Venue staff need o know that they are not able to enter the creche area, without a member of the event childcare team knowing about it first.
They should also have a very quick overview of safeguarding, understanding the basics. As well as be aware of risk assessment, staff ratio, safeguarding, register procedure, health and safety regulation, what to do should there be a lost child, policies and procedures that will comply with OFSTED Regulation or EYFS Framework?
As you can see, there are lots of things to think about when it comes to organising childcare at your event. However, one of the best things that you can do is to make sure that you choose a professional mobile childcare company who are going to be able to help you through the process and make things that little bit easier, as well as make sure that everything is properly organised for you during your event.