Rooms & ratios
Hold ratio through the awkward hours
Drop-off, lunch cover and the 4pm drift stop being a daily gamble.
Ratio rarely breaks in the middle of the morning. It breaks in the seams — the twenty minutes at handover, the lunch rotation, the slow hour when staff leave before children do.
Step 1 of 5
Write the ratio you must hold on the room door
Full day care runs 1:3 under one year, 1:5 for one to two, 1:6 for two to three and 1:8 for three to six; sessional services run 1:11 for two-and-a-half to six. Everyone in the room should be able to state their own number without looking it up.
Do this nowPrint the number for each room and put it where staff stand, not in the office.
What it looks like from the outsideStaff who cannot state their room's ratio is a finding on its own.
Step 2 of 5
Find your two worst twenty-minute windows
Take last week and mark where headcount peaked against who was actually on the floor. Almost every service has two windows that do the damage, and they are usually the same two every week.
Do this nowMark the two windows on the rota in a colour you will notice.
Step 3 of 5
Name the cover before you need it
A named person for each window beats a general expectation that someone will step in. The room lead should know who is coming and when, without making a call.
Do this nowWrite the cover name against each of the two windows.
Step 4 of 5
Count children by room, not by building
A service can be comfortably within ratio overall and out of ratio in the baby room at the same time. The building number hides exactly the problem you are trying to see.
Do this nowMove your headcount to a per-room number, checked at the two marked windows.
What it looks like from the outsideInspectors look at the room in front of them, never at your average across the service.
Step 5 of 5
Log the near miss, not just the breach
The morning you were one adult away from being short is the useful record. It tells you the window is fragile before it fails.
Do this nowAdd a one-line near-miss note to the daily record and review the notes monthly.
That is the whole guide.
Everything above is something a service can do without buying anything. If you would rather the expiry register, the ratio count and the subsidy line kept themselves, that is what AcornCloud is.