Helping Hands Network is passionate about exceeding expectations to provide premium outside school hours care and vacation care programs for children.
Our reason for being is for Building Brighter Futures together in partnership with parents and school communities by supporting children to learn through play in fun, rich learning environments.
Helping Hands Network delivers OSHC services through a ‘School Community Partnership’ model, which results in far greater integration and involvement in the school community than a typical outsource model. Our key focus is always on providing the highest-quality care for children, while giving the best possible support to families and school communities.
One of the major keys to our success is our ‘School Community Partnership’ model. We become an integral part of each school, delivering the highest-quality OSHC programs, while adding significant value to children, families and schools. We listen hard, and implement ideas from our school communities, ensuring we provide a personalised service.
Each OSHC service in Australia is assessed by Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA), and awarded an overall rating, based on the quality of the service provided. According to ACECQA, 87% of our services 'meet' or 'exceed' the Standard.
We acknowledge that families need to feel comfortable with the team members who will be caring for their children. That’s why we take exceptional care when recruiting team members, with our HR team meticulously screening all applicants to ensure they are suitably qualified and experienced for a specific role. Naturally, Helping Hands Network also complies with all laws and regulations.
We live our values every day and they underpin how we approach every interaction with children, families, schools and communities.
Helping Hands Network strongly believe in working in unison with schools by tailoring our program and activities to align with the school community, environment and the behaviours of individual children. We strive to uphold the values of the school each and every single day.
We work closely with each school to match the right coordinators and educators to the specific values, philosophies and needs of our schools. Helping Hands Network offers excellent career opportunities for team members. We have enjoyed seeing many service team members progress to management or support-office roles.
A core purpose of Helping Hands Network is to provide a safe and caring environment, where the power of learning through play has a positive and lasting impact on the children in our care. We do this through the delivery of inspirational learning, and fun, engaging play spaces that inspire exploration and inquiry.
After a busy day at school, the first thing most children think about is their tummy!
We provide a healthy, tasty and nutritious selection of food for breakfast and afternoon tea. Our menus cater for children with special dietary requirements, including those with allergies or cultural needs, and take into consideration each child’s preferences.
I have found the staff, centre managers and regional managers all work in a highly professional, open and honest manner. Helping Hands contributes significant amounts of untied funding to Norville State School each year.
The service is independent from the school, but provides a good partnership that enhances marketability of the school, and provides its own share of positive shopping centre conversations in the community
Helping Hands is a great fit for the culture of our school, passionately delivering on their commitment to work closely with the school to deliver positive outcomes for our school community. Nearly 30% of our school community attends the OSHC service daily.
I am always confident that the staff of the service operate with the best interests of the children and their families in mind. While the service deals with issues independently, it keeps channels of communication open and works within the policies of the school.
The programs delivered for our students during before, after and vacation care sessions are of a high standard and quality, supported by well trained staff and resources. The programs are constantly evolving based on the interested of the children in care. I regularly visit the service and enjoy seeing children engaged, laughing, having fun and learning through play based activities.