Scribblings from the Mitchy Side

Aunty Eve is going home on Monday! Wooo hooo! Now there's an outcome I wouldn't have expected even 3 weeks ago :) But home she is going and very happy about it she is too.

Oooh she was a miserable soul last weekend, they moved her into a ward full of *sharp intake of breath* elderly people! To be fair, I could understand her unhappiness, everyone else in her ward was either comatose or not in full possession of their faculties (to be charitable). To someone as mentally alert as Aunty Eve, this was torture. And she said so. Pretty much the entire time I was there last Sunday which I have to confess, wasn't as long as I was planning, because I ran out of things to say and she had no intention of helping out with the conversation. So it was a big relief today to find her much happier about her lot. Two more days and she's outta there.

Other things of awesome - I made someone cry today. No, really, this is a good thing! Let me explain. One of the rules of the Nursery Education Grant is that when a child starts attending an LEA nursery/school, while still attending a private nursery, the private nursery can no longer claim the NEG for that child. This is because LEA schools are funded via the school budget doled out from the Government and that child's place has already been paid for, in full. Therefore, if we were to also pay the private nursery, we'd be paying twice for the same child. It's a problem, actually, as often the child is only attending the school for, say, one morning a week and going to the private place the rest of the time, which means the parent is liable for the private nursery fees, which are not cheap. However, right now, we have no means of splitting the funding across the two schools. All this will change next term, although we're still waiting on exactly how it's going to be done, but hopefully it won't be PartyGirl's or my problem. We'll just process the forms and someone else can sort it out. In the meantime, though, particularly this term when schools often have a staggered intake through January and up to half-term, we get a lot of calls from nurseries and parents about why the hell they can't claim funding any more.

Well earlier in the week, a nursery rang to say they'd put a child on the form for children who attend more than one nursery but they'd just found out the other school she was attending was an LEA funded school, a special school for the deaf, as it happens. The girl was only going there one morning a week, could they possibly still claim the rest of the grant. Now, strictly speaking, the answer was no. Rules are rules and all that. However, when I ran it past PartyGirl, we kinda looked at each other and went "Oh **** it! It's a special school, she's going one lousy morning a week, let's pretend we know nothing about it and let the claim stand as it is." So we did.

This morning, the child's parent phoned. Obviously, she'd not heard from the nursery that we'd already agreed to pay. So she wasn't happy and she was saying how she was going to have to take her daughter out of the special school and how it was so good for her because she was learning to talk and so on and so forth. At first, I didn't click what it was about - we get a LOT of calls in a week - but then she said the name of the school and a small alarm bell went off in my head. I checked the claim form, confirmed the name of the child and beamed happily at the phone.
"Oh, that's ok, we've already paid your daughter's claim, we sorted this out with the nursery earlier in the week."
Silence from the other end of the phone.
"....what? So..... *dawning hope* I don't have to pay the nursery?"
"No, you don't have to pay the nursery, all her sessions there for this term are covered."
"So I don't have to take her out of the special school?"
"No."
"*choking noise*"
"Are you ok?"
"I'm crying! It's such a relief!!"
"*coughs in a not-choking up in the slightest dammit-kind of way, speaks gruffly* That's quite all right, we're happy to let it slide, it's going to come into force next term anyway....*cough* Err, anything else I can help you with?"
"No, no, oh thank you so much!"
"You're welcome!"

I basked in the warm fuzzy feelings for the rest of the day :D