CLAY mimics the existing behaviours of parents cooperating on an ad hoc basis but with greater privacy, transparency and control than out of app arrangements.
Modern day parents report feeling disconnected second only to teens. Schools can help parents and their kids experience a sense of belonging.
A dedicated space where parents have nominated their willingness to help out unites parents with a shared purpose and creates a virtuous cycle for school.
This is the best way to regularly, schedule short help with the kids.
Placing school based friendships at the core of shared school runs, and trips to activities - can transform the lives of students and parents and power their engagement with your school.
Time poor parents are chasing too little support at too great an expense. This affects students and the school. Faltering parent engagement hampers educational effectiveness, decision making and fundraising.
Clay helps schools and parents have win-win, community building interactions throughout the year. Focusing on school runs, and activity participation, Clay makes it simple, personal and fun for everyone to get a little help from parents they’ve met through their child’s school - the heart of their local community.
With Clay, there is no haves and have nots and no criteria for getting help. Each week, verified parent members can simply choose to show their potential availability to include another child with their own.
Parents seeking help can also publish their requests for ad hoc help to their choice of friends favourites or entire community. Their child’s data is hidden from view and when they receive offers from friends they can either accept or ignore the offer to help.
This way, even students needing support that have working parents can benefit from 5 - 10 hours of clearly communicated arrangements between parents. Affordability is never an issue with Clay’s unique karma points system.
Clay recognises the unique position of schools being central in the life of any young family in the local area. Clay only allows parents of primary school aged children to register with the app using both 2 step verification to join (like your banking app) and social vouching by current members.
This means a users’ identity can be initially verified via the school and fellow parents can then choose to allow them into the community.
With personal, local reputations at stake, bookings, timeliness and communication are highly reliable using the app’s purpose built calendar, push notifications, geo - location, calendar integrations and secure bookings - only chat.
Clay is a community of school registered parents and friends sharing school runs and ad hoc arragments to support the students. It mirrors the ways parents have always lent support within their school community but uses technology for better reach, beyond a static small group of friends along with better visibility, timeliness and safety.
It is well accepted that strong parent engagement helps a school reach its teaching goals more efficiently. Research shows that the level of parent involvement beyond the school gate has the greatest impact on a child’s education, even beyond having an active P&C. Clay provides a focus for the many school related, micro- interactions that occur within and outside of the school gate.
The app builds the best sort of social capital...bridging capital. Bridging capital is demonstrated when members are empowered to reach out across their community for help in way they could not have before. This directly feeds back into National Quality Standard (NQS) Quality Area 6: Collaborative partnerships with families and communities and the Better Buddies Framework.
Members can only enter the community as a known person. The community is school centred so the in-app community will reflect how many people a parent knows in the community. There is a 2 step secure sign in, verifications from friends, and a pin. The app is designed for people who know each other to make arragments with each other. All members have presented themselves as school parents and you also choose to only book help with members that have working with children safety checks. You always have control of who you choose to book with.
CLAY mimics parents current behaviours. As most members will with friends, the App encourages members to get a check relevant to their area but it is not compulsory. Members are always in control of who they make arrangments and need to confirm they’ve had an in-person meeting prior to the booking taking place.
The app is free to download and use for parents registered at schools using Clay. When a parent registers within the app, they’ll be creating a possibility for a community of shared help to exist at your school. When enough same school parents join - your school’s full access is switched on and parents can start making clearer arrangements with each other. Community building takes time and supporting the use of the app within your community gives the best chance of success for the school community.
