Clients are whoever requests and pays for the tuition service

There can often be two or more clients per child. For example, the child’s parent can request the tuition, but the child’s grandparents can pay for the tuition, this is very common. Clients can also be a school or educational funding body.

Our Clients come from all walks of life, all types of backgrounds and are very diverse. The only commonality between our clients is the wish to help their child succeed and thrive with their education.

Clients self-refer. They either send an initial enquiry through the enquiry form on Westcountry SEN’s Website, send an email, phone the main contact number or send a message via social media.

Initially clients just want information and to find out about the service and offer very minimal information when they first make contact.

The referral details will be passed to a Client Manager who will contact them and complete an initial assessment.

Client Managers need to be very skilled at putting clients at ease and letting them tell their stories. Often it is concerning their child’s difficulties at school and educational history. Clients need to feel understood and listened to in order for them to open up and talk about whoever they are referring. The initial phone call often gives vital informal that enables the tuition to succeed.

Clients are then offered a more formal assessment. They can fill out a form about their child or answer the questions over the phone, it normally takes about 30 minutes to complete.

The initial enquiry, first phone call and formal assessment can often take 7 days to complete. This is why tutors are asked to never offer a student a new space, or suggest a new space is possible if a student request it, as the tutors will not be aware of new students that are already in the pipeline. This is why there is a 7-day window to offering replacement sessions in the online tutoring section of this course.

Once all the information is gained form the client the client manager will look at various factors and match the tuition request to a tutor. Tuition will normally start the following week.

Client contract

There is a mutual contract between Westcountry SEN and the client

• A fixed fee is agreed, and the client has a certainty of the monthly cost
• The client will be allocated a tutor who is the best match to their student
• The client will receive a lesson report within 24 hours of the session
• The client will be charged the full fee if the lesson is cancelled with less than 24 hour’s notice
• There is an open-door policy with Client Managers
• Any changes in the tuition request can be negotiated and accommodated depending on availability.

There is also an unspoken contract that should be obvious, but worth stating. Let’s use a scenario to help explain:

Mrs Baker (the client) refers her daughter, Molly (the student) for maths tuition. The tutor begins working with her and makes great progress. One day Molly asks the tutor to help her with English and not maths.

Can you see the dilemma in the above scenario? If not, just imagine this. You pay a gardener to come to your house to cut the lawn. You agree the gardener will cut the lawn every week. One day you step out into your garden and see the lawn is long and untidy, but the hedges are perfectly cut and neat. Without your agreement the gardener decided to do something different than what you asked for and you are now expected to pay for it, even though you neither asked for it nor agreed to it.

If the client requests and expects to receive help for their child with one subject, they may be upset if help was given on another subject without their permission.   However, we do not want to discourage student’s learning and asking for academic help. This is the dilemma.

The best way to deal with dilemmas like this is to say you will help the student with their request of this lesson, but you will need to check if you can do it again for another lesson. Trainee and newly qualified tutors will need to inform their Client Manager who will talk to the parent / client to check what they are happy with. In some cases, this may require an increase in tuition time, or an addition of days for other subjects.

Experienced and senior tutors will be able to negotiate the subjects and lesson goal with the clients themselves.

Take home message

• The client journey is not a quick one
• A new referral can take up to 3 weeks to complete
• The client and the Client Manager negotiate what is being requested and advice is given from the Client Manager
• Clients need to be consulted and grant permission for any permanent changes
• By the time a tutor receives all the requested tuition information lots of hours have been put in to setting up the tuition
• Negotiation regarding changes with the direction of the tutoring are perfectly acceptable once the child and tutor get to know each other well and the child trusts the tutor, however the client and Client Manager also need to be a part of this process