Step 2 – Organise the rota

Meet the parents for 15 minutes at the end of one of your meeting and discuss your programme of the next term (what outings you are planning and what help you need in your section each week). Be friendly and welcoming and think about how you tell the parents what help you need.

Don’t be pushy and insist all parents’ help. This makes it a chore and not all parents can help. Gently explain they may only need to help once a month or every 6 to 8 weeks if enough people sign up to help.

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Use the parent rota template to devise your rota. 

Click here to download the rota template

You can then ask parents/carers to nominate themselves for specific dates at the meeting by describing what you are doing that session.  Would a parent/guardian take control of organising the rota for you?

This way the parents see who else is helping in the section and can see they are not alone. They may choose to help with another parent they know and knowing that they are not the only parent helping can encourage others to help too.