Uralla's St Joseph's Primary School principal Judy Elks was able to announce the establishment of an exciting new after school care initiative for Uralla parents, thanks to two years hard work and a $30,000 State grant announced by Member for Northern Tablelands Adam Marshall at the school on Tuesday morning.
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Mrs Elks said the initiative opened on Monday and was all about options for Uralla parents who may work in Armidale and need after school care for children from Kindergarten to Year 6.
"When I started here four years ago, we had 19 students who should really have been enrolled in our school happened to be at St Mary's because of the before and after school care," she said.
"So, we thought 'Well, what can we do to help those parents?', so they have an option if they would like to come back and have their kids here in Uralla. It is a service we're trying to provide to the community for parents and for kids to stay within the Uralla township."
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This service will operate Monday to Friday from 7am - 9am and 3pm-6pm. Afternoon tea and activities will be provided. A bus service will operate between Uralla Central School and St Joseph's School at no cost to those families using the service and bus fares absorbed by Sherpa Kids who will review the terms of its service after the second term.
"For the first two terms, it will come for free with no gap fee. So, if you can access government subsidy, that's all that will be claimed and parents will pay nothing for the service," Mrs Elks said.
"We can cater for 24 before and after school places. I'm hoping we'll have more than that, but we'll see. If we could get these kids back into their community it would be great."
In announcing the funding Mr Marshall said he thought it was a wonderful initiative and hoped the option would be taken up by Uralla parents.
"I think it's going to be really, really good. It's something that is not available in Uralla at all at the moment, and hopefully, if we get more demand, this can be expanded to not just offering after school, as it is at the moment, to before school and I'd be happy to see that happen," he said.
Mr Marshall said the funding came from a program set up by the State Government a couple of years ago to provide schools with the opportunity to go down the same path as St Joseph's Primary School.
"The nature of society has changed. Typically we have a lot more single parent families and obviously if you're a single parent you're working, and often in two parent families, both of them are working full-time or part-time as well," he said.
"So, acknowledging the way families and work hours are changing, facilities like this are going to become the norm, rather than the exception."
