Program Policies

1. Attendance

Please tell us if your child will miss a session. Write to enroll@ilmbridges.com.

If your child misses a session, the instructor can give a make-up activity. A make-up activity helps your child keep up. It is recorded as a make-up, not as attendance. Where a course gives written notes and a catch-up checklist for each class, your child works through them and shows the instructor at the next class, or in a supervised catch-up time the instructor offers.

When a course ends, a learner who came to at least three quarters of the sessions held, counting each approved make-up as a session, and who took part in presenting the final project, receives a certificate of completion. A learner who came to at least half receives a certificate of participation. The instructor proposes each certificate from the record of arrivals, and an administrator approves it. A certificate is issued by ilmBridge and claims no accreditation, credit or grade. You choose the name it carries, and print it, in your family area.

2. Where the group meets

The program page names the place when the host has agreed to be named. Once a place is offered, your family area shows the place, its address, how to get in, the room and a note on arriving, and any session held somewhere else.

3. Arriving and leaving

Each group's times are on its program page and in your family area. Unless they say otherwise:

• Please bring your child no earlier than 15 minutes before a session starts, so that they have time to settle.
• At the end of a session a learner is released only to an adult you have named as able to collect, unless you have told us that your child may leave alone.
• Each adult who collects shows their ID card, printed from your family area. Our staff scan it and compare the photograph with the person in front of them. We do not release your child to a named adult whose photograph we do not hold, or whose card is not valid: we keep your child with our staff and call you.
• Please collect your child within 15 minutes of the end of the session, and never later than 25 minutes. If you cannot be there by then, tell us before the session and send another adult you have named as able to collect. To name someone new, change the people to call in your family area before the session, and add their photograph. If your child is still with us after the latest time, we call you.
• If nobody has come 15 minutes after the session ends, we call you, then the other people you named. Your child stays with our staff until an adult you named arrives.
• A parent who changes the plan on the day tells us by phone or in writing, never by a message passed through the child.
• When your child arrives, they hold up their ID card to the Welcome Screen at the classrooms, or you check them in there with your card, or with your face if you chose to register it, or our staff scan their card at the door, so that we know who is here. The Welcome Screen never lets a child go: at the end of a session, collection is always as above.

4. Conduct

We ask every learner to:

• treat others with respect;
• follow the instructor's safety instructions;
• take care of the equipment;
• ask before using another learner's work.

If a learner's conduct puts anyone at risk, the instructor speaks with the learner first, then with you. If it continues, we may ask the learner to leave the program. If we do, we refund the fee for the sessions not yet held, as for a withdrawal.

5. Equipment

We provide the equipment, unless the program page says otherwise. Equipment stays in the room.

A class may suggest a short task to practise at home. It is optional, needs no account and no equipment from us, and never counts against your child.

6. If your child is unwell

Please keep your child at home if they are unwell. If your child becomes unwell during a session, we call you. If your child is seriously hurt or suddenly very unwell, we call 911 first, and then you.

We do not give medicine. If your child carries their own prescribed emergency medicine, such as an inhaler or an epinephrine auto-injector, please tell us in the support note when you accept the place; your child keeps it with them.

7. When we change or cancel a session

We tell you by email and in your family area as early as we can, and the program page shows the change with a note. When we cancel a session, we offer one make-up session where we can, at the same place. You can download the group's sessions to your calendar from your family area; downloading again brings in any change.

8. Refunds and cancellation

The fee for one session is what you pay for the program, after any discount, divided by the number of sessions. If you withdraw, a part of the fee that is not yet due is cancelled.

The program page and your offer say when the fee is due. Where they say you pay all or part of it at the first session, you pay then, in cash to our staff or by Zelle, and get a receipt, and we confirm your place before that session so that your child's ID card is ready.

We refund by the way you paid, within 14 days of your request. Money paid in person to our staff, at the host's premises or elsewhere, is given back by ilmBridge. A refund is recorded, and shown in your family area.

To withdraw, give up the place in your family area, or write to enroll@ilmbridges.com.

A group may offer discounts. The program page shows those for every family; the request form shows any that has a condition, for you to tick if it is true, and our staff check it before offering a place. Of the discounts of a kind, only the largest applies; a discount marked as extra applies on top, on what is left. The offer shows the fee, each discount and what you pay, and that amount does not change afterwards.

9. Help with the fee

If the fee is hard to pay, tell us at any time: tick the box when you accept your offer, use "Ask for more time or help" in your family area, write to us, or speak to us at a session. You do not have to explain. Only our administrators read what you write, and asking never affects your child's place. We answer every request, but we make no promise of help.

The help we may give, each agreed by two of our staff:

• more days to pay one part of the fee;
• a scholarship, which forgives part or all of what is left, with nothing in return;
• payment of part or all of what is left from a grant we hold;
• paying later: what is left stays owed with no date, no interest and no fee, and we check in with you kindly around a day we tell you.

Help counts like a payment, against the soonest part of the fee first. You see it in your family area. Other families and your child's instructors never see it.

10. Photographs and recordings

We ask your permission separately. Your answer never affects your child's place. You may change it at any time in your family area.

Our instructors photograph what learners build, for the team's logbook and poster. These photographs show the work, not faces.

When families come to watch an end-of-course showcase, please photograph or film only your own child.

11. How we keep learners safe

• Two adults are present at every session.
• Every instructor has been screened before teaching.
• Every instructor has completed our safeguarding training.
• An adult is never alone with a learner where they cannot be seen.
• Instructors do not message learners privately.
• We never leave a child alone, and never take a child home in a private car.
• Two adults stay with a child who has not been collected, until an adult you named arrives.
• A concern can be raised with our safeguarding lead at safeguarding@ilmbridges.com, which is read every day a program runs.
• Instructors see the names of the children in their group, and mark who is present. They do not see health, emergency or collection details.
• Every incident or concern at a session is written down the same day and kept by our safeguarding lead.

• Emergency and collection details are read only by our safeguarding lead, and every reading and every printed list is recorded.
• Messages from us to a group go to every family of the group at once, and are kept.

12. Raising a concern

If you are worried about a child's safety, write to safeguarding@ilmbridges.com. If a child is in danger now, call 911.

If you have a complaint about a program, write to hello@ilmbridges.com. We answer within 5 days.