Diploma in Children's Services - Placement
Has anyone done their Diploma in Children's Services? and if so, have any of you done your placement outside of a child care centre?
I started my Diploma yesterday and was basically told from my lecturer that I can't do my placement where I work. I did Cert III placement at a local kindy and after placement finished was offered hours for next term. I asked why not, because I started the Dipolma as I was given the impression from another lecturer that I could, and was told that I had to be involved with programming (our Kindy does programming every fortnight that the director is more than happy for me to be involved with), and that I had to be in charge of a room, which might be a stumbling block.
I told the director that next time I was in I would get a placement book so she can see exactly what is expected of me. So yeah was just wondering if anyone else has done their placement outside of a child care centre.
I tried 19 centre's when I was looking for placement with my Cert III and couldn't get into any as they were all flooded with people already on placement.
Registered User
I think for the diploma. You do have to do a certain amount of placement hours with babies. And you have to do opening and closing hours. But other than that, I don't know of any other restrictions.
I have supervised Cert III students here at home, not sure whether you can do that with a Diploma?
So I just rang my training centre and spoke to the other lecturer. She said that I will need to experience long day care. I said "don't forget I am not 18 living at home with my parents and/or don't have children old enough to look after themselves for long periods. It is just impossible for me to be gone from 6/7 in the morning until 6/7 at night" So she is going to see what she can find out.
If they had told me this prior to signing up I wouldn't have bothered. I'm not in a desperate need for my Diploma. I was doing it because it was free. Really annoyed that I was told my kindy work would be fine, to now to be told it won't.
I had to do 30hrs work with babies as part of my Cert III. If I didn't do that there was no way I'd be able to do a Diploma. I will be dealing with under 2's as part of my Kindy work next term anyway as they do occasional care as well.
Registered User
Occasional care could work, except for the need for ongoing observations of two under 2s. Depends on your service.
As for hours, my students have always one one week of earlies (approx 7-3) and one week of lates (10-6) but I've always been really flexible about when that is, and how they can fit in their hours.
Moderator
I've completed my Diploma and had to do all placement in child care centres (both preschool and long day care). I approached them about doing part of my placement in a women and children's refuge as I was a child support worker there at the time. Originally it was said 'yep, no probs' but later as placement approached it was knocked on the head and I was told it had to be in a childcare setting.
Surely they wont expect you to do 12 hours in long day care. I did shifts, cant quite recall but I think 6- 3 or 9- 6.
Well if I could do a 9 - 6 that wouldn't be so bad. I've let my kids stay home for 45 mins before until their dad gets home when I had to do a 40hr relief shift a few weeks ago. It is more the early mornings I can't do. as I have to give a child medication etc before he goes to school. So if I was expected to be there for an open I wouldn't be able to.
Registered User
I work at a training organization (we don't do children's services) but I had a quick look at the requirements, yes you need to do a total of 240 hours of experience, there is only one unit that specifies age range, of under 24 months and that's for 120 hours, the rest is in a education and care setting covering infants up to 12 year olds, but there is nothing saying you must do open and close times.
This is the new diploma that was released about 4 months ago now.
Fix up of requirements.
Last edited by sweetpea678; September 25th, 2013 at 02:41 PM.
Thanks for that Sweetpea. I am on the new Diploma. They started a brand new class for us as we were doing the new one. The other class is doing the old one. The total hours of placement don't bother as we have two separate blocks to do it in. A 2 week block and a 4 week block at the end. So will quite happily do 8.30-4.30 at the Kindy 5 days a week (if I am allowed) My paid work is with under 2's. Having said that though parts of the placement blocks are in school holiday times, and the kindy won't be open. I can't do placement in holidays anyway, due to the kids.
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