OSCAR
Y’s OSCAR is a registered childcare programme with Child Youth and Family and meets all childcare standards with the National Association of OSCAR.
YMCA Wanganui has been offering Out of School Care And Recreation (OSCAR) since 1996 and have been running morning care since 1999. The programme operates from 6.30 am to 9.00 am and 3.00 pm to 6.00 pm.
The goal of the YMCA OSCAR programme is to provide an affordable and convenient service for parents that is safe and fun for children, meeting their recreational, social and developmental needs.
This programme provides a safe, stimulating environment, as well as assisting in the personal development of between 80 and 100 children a day aged 5-13 years. At two venues, age appropriate activities are provided by a team of trained, qualified staff in a stadium based centre.
Over the last 5 years as the programme has grown there has been the need to evaluate the changing needs of the children and parents. As a consequence of this ongoing evaluation the programme hours have been extended.
For both the morning and afternoon programmes we provide an additional service of dropping off and picking up children to and from school, this is done with our own fleet as well as using Rivercity Cabs. Children booked into our morning programme are given breakfast and on arrival to the afternoon programme children are provided with afternoon tea. Children are offered a variety of recreation activities, which include sport and craft as well as a supervised homework corner, reading corner and computer corner.
Another important request has been to provide activities to the children outside the venue, and staff has been very innovative in their planning, with the idea of providing field trips to different places e.g.: beach, farm, community parks and other providers of children’s entertainment or activity.