Non-negotiable business qualification: love kids

Dawn Engelbrecht (left) and Bev Parsons – mothers who have turned SKIDS into an effective after-school care business in partnership with 35 schools. They intend to be serving 50 schools by Christmas.

Dawn Engelbrecht and Bev Parsons have a golden rule about welcoming people into their organisation – if they don’t detect a genuine passion for caring for children in the first interview, there is no second interview.

This, say the pair of Auckland mothers who are joint shareholders and directors of SKIDS, has been the secret to their success in expanding their after-school care organisation.

SKIDS stands for “Safe Kids in Daily Supervision,” a concept which Dawn and Bev have now successfully introduced to over 35 schools and which they intend to be based in 50 schools throughout the country by the end of the year.

They are expanding SKIDS under a constantly trialled and improved franchise system where each school adopting a SKIDS after-school care programme, is served by a SKIDS franchised company owned by a local person – very often a parent of the school – who has been specially trained and prepared to run the programme.

“We have a management system that is being improved all the time,” said Dawn.

“But the most important requirement is that each of our franchise owners must love kids and love helping them to improve themselves.

“We have wonderful success stories of children improving their school work simply because they go into a structured but enjoyable programme for two hours while they wait for their parents to collect them.”

SKIDS focuses on three important goals:

• That each school receives the necessary support for their pupils until parents finish work, (as well as rental income).

• That each SKIDS programme is a successful part-time business for the “right kind” of person.

• That parents see an improvement in the academic and social well being of their children.

Bev said there are many more aspects to the programme but in the end it comes down to identifying the right people to join the company.

“We do have business ambitions but we know that even one SKIDS branch with compromised standards could affect all of us. We are dealing with a highly sensitive part of NZ’s social fabric and so we have to be super-alert to the people we invite into the business,” she said.

Dawn and Bev decided to invest in SKIDS after they had each become involved as SKIDS franchisees.

They both had witnessed the growing demand from parents to have access to somebody they could completely trust, to care for their children in that two or three hour space between schools and work places closing.

“It’s a significant social issue not only in NZ but in many developed countries of the World,” said Dawn.

“The limits to our expansion are not so much finding schools and parents, but the time we take to prepare each SKIDS location and train our people. We work on a ratio of one trained SKIDS employee to every 10 children.

“We are getting at least three calls a week from school principals so that’s a very encouraging sign.”

Dawn said there are many other after-school care services, usually run as single concerns. These usually end when the parent running them is either distracted to other obligations or their own children leave the school.

“I think the schools like the fact that SKIDS is an organisation committed to the long term retention of the service. And they can get on with educating, knowing we are experts at what we do.

“We also produce some rental income for the school.”

Dawn and Bev say they have already received indications of demand for the same service in Australia but expansion in NZ will be the focus for at least another two years.
SKIDS is approved by CYFs for parents to recover after-school care costs.