Retainer and settling in sessions

[ruthbray]

Advice needed please, I have an 8 month old starting in May, they have signed contracts and started to pay a 50% retainer of £130 per month until the beginning of May.

I informed the parents that I dont charge for settling in sessions not specifying really how many ioffer. In the past I have offered 2-3 sessions for free.

These parents are super organised and have just emailed me with a list of approx dates between Mar a d May that they would like their little boy to come for ranging from 2 hours building up to two full days at the end of the April.

feel like I need to be assertive from the beginning on this one, they are anxious parents and want their son to be really settled before returning to work but I feel ten sessions for free may be slightly over doing it!

should I be including two sessions and then should I charge for the others? or is the retainer for this?


thanks ever so much , Ruth

[lollipop kid]

Advice needed please, I have an 8 month old starting in May, they have signed contracts and started to pay a 50% retainer of £130 per month until the beginning of May.

I informed the parents that I dont charge for settling in sessions not specifying really how many ioffer. In the past I have offered 2-3 sessions for free.

These parents are super organised and have just emailed me with a list of approx dates between Mar a d May that they would like their little boy to come for ranging from 2 hours building up to two full days at the end of the April.

feel like I need to be assertive from the beginning on this one, they are anxious parents and want their son to be really settled before returning to work but I feel ten sessions for free may be slightly over doing it!

should I be including two sessions and then should I charge for the others? or is the retainer for this?


thanks ever so much , Ruth

I actually use the retainer to give parents the option of bringing their child for 50% of the time (so if they're planning on joining your 3 days a week, then they can come for 1.5 days each week) before the child joins on their start date. This way, you know that the child is totally settled before the parent goes back to work; and the parent feels that they are not spending "money for nothing".

It works for me. For the example above, they'd come either 3 x half days, or 1 full day and a half day that week. The exception is any time that I'm on holiday, as you can't charge retainer for holiday. But you start to 'accrue' holiday from the child's actual first day with you, so this actually means you've got them on your books earlier as far as holiday is concerned. (I work holiday as roughly 1.25 weeks for every 3 months the child is with me - I take 5 weeks in the year. Plus 2 Bank holidays for each 3 months the child is with me. This comes in handy if the child leaves during any 12 month period. You don't actually 'accrue' holiday in the true sense of the word, as you're self-employed. I just look at it this way to help my mid-year calculation if a child leaves mid-year.)

I hope that helps.

All the best,

L

[k1rstie]

I think the retainer is to keep the space for them. So it's their space. You are charging a half fee, so I personally would be happy to offer care up to the value of £130 per month. You would not be working for nothing as you being paid a half fee.

[moggy]

I think if there is a 50% retainer being paid to save the space they can top-up to 100% for you to care for the child- same as some do in school hols with a retainer (I think Pacey contracts put this in their small print).
My max settling in session is 1hr long, I do 2-3 sessions building up to that.
If parents want more days before their first day back at work I ask them to make the contract start date a few days before they start work- I always suggest this when doing contracts.

[bunyip]

I think the problem is that you're too late to "be assertive from the beginning on this one" because, in a sense, the beginning has already begun.

Tbh, I'd put this one down to experience and learn the lesson. You can't assume parents will know how many settling sessions you intend to offer unless you tell them. Look at it this way: if you have to ask the question "should I be including two sessions and then should I charge for the others? or is the retainer for this?" how can the parent be expected to know what's the usual thing to expect of their CM? In fact, that's an excellent rule of thumb for all communications with parents, and one of the biggest causes of breakdowns in parent-CM relationships.

Essentially you've left an 'informational void of assumption.' The parents are far more clear about what they want than you have been about what you want to offer, and they've quickly filled that void, got in first and spelled out their expectations. At this point, if you choose to backtrack and put your foot down about what you meant to offer, it could look rather as if you're being mean with them or, worse still, as if you didn't really know what you were offering which looks a bit disorganised. (Not a criticism, I'm just trying to look at this from the parent's point of view.) That said, you might be able to go by a feeling for the kind of people your clients are and maybe sit down to thrash out the sort of honest compromise that leaves everybody happy.

As Kirstie says, you're getting £130pm, so you're not doing badly out of this, even though you'll end up providing more settling sessions than you intended. Having a well-settled child at the end of it won't be a bad thing in any case.

Hope it all works out.