Ella is reminiscing. Oh, how well she remembers her first day as director. She was very excited, but, hoped she was up to the challenge. Of course, there was no reason why she shouldn’t be as she had been "second in command" for nine years, but, she had never had to handle all aspects of the center before. She had felt a tingle of excitement as she had greeted the other staff members, parents and children. The center is small - forty-two children - starting with toddlers through to five year olds. They did not have an after-school unit because there is a well run "Excel" program in the local school. The owner of the center , Linda, who had also been the director, had wanted to put more time and energy into her home life as she had some pressing personal problems and being confident in Ella’s abilities had asked her to fill her shoes. This means that Ella has to organize eight staff members, and a part time cook, plus she would spend some time with the children - usually covering breaks etc. and the rest of the time would be in the office. Ella had done this a little in the past when Linda was on vacation, so was aware of what the job entailed - or so she thought. Linda had always been busy, and very competent, so there were many aspects of the job Ella had not handled or even seen Linda handle. Unfortunately Linda had been unable to spend much time with Ella, as Linda had been called away to nurse her mother who was dying of cancer.

The first days had gone well - no problems with the center or from parents. Ella had heaved a sigh of relief. She had spent some time at the end of each day going through correspondence, which had posed her first problem. What exactly was she supposed to do with this stuff? Give it to Linda to read? File it? Do a synopsis of the mail and then file it? Then where should she file some of it? She spent a lot of time trying to figure out what letters went in to which files, but, she discovered that she did not really understand Linda’s filing system. The invoices also posed another problem. Give them to Bill - Linda’s husband who also did the books - daily, save them weekly, or monthly? She decided to keep the invoices and letters in separate files until the end of the month, or when she next saw one of them and mark them "Linda" and "Bill". She also put any cheques, or correspondence from parents concerning money/fees etc. into Bill’s file. She was not sure when or how often Linda or Bill would be checking in.

Ella had continued this way for a month. Linda had called twice, but, as she seemed to be a bit frazzled Ella had not bothered her with what she felt were petty concerns. Ella had not heard from Bill at all.

Ella’s seemingly ordered life came to pieces a few days into the following month. There had been an irate phone call from Bill. "Ella, do you have any invoices there from Childscope and Farmers - the milk people?"

"Just a sec, Bill, let me check. I am glad you called because I have a file folder here for you with statements and invoices and a few cheques that I am sure you need."

There had been silence at the end of the phone. Then, Bill had said in a very controlled voice, "Ellen, why on earth didn’t you send them to me?" He had indignantly muttered on for a while making Ella feel as if she had let him down. She had hung up feeling depressed and that she had failed Bill in some way and also confused as he had not given her any real direction on how she was to continue. She had also forgotten to ask for some petty cash that the center needed. Ella sighed and turned to a pile of papers that Linda had sent her. Ella had little time to look at them in any great detail. She discovered that they followed a theme - family groupings within child care settings. Very interesting stuff, but, was this a hint, just for interest or what?

Ella finished skimming through the family grouping information and moved on to another pile of papers. Amongst these were requests from the staff for equipment and supplies. Certainly too much for the petty cash account - now depleted - and Ella decided after the phone conversation with Bill that she would put these requests on hold.

The next upset had come when Bill came bustling in early one morning a few weeks later.

"Ella are you hoarding invoices again?" Ella had started to send invoices to Bill, but, had held onto two as she had not received the goods yet - or so she thought. Of course these were the ones he was looking for and on investigation the goods had arrived, but, the staff had not told her and neither had she asked them. Bill was furious as he had missed the early payment discounts that he always took advantage of. Then he blew again when he saw the attendance sheets. A couple of families had changed from part-time to full time status at the beginning of the previous month and he hadn’t known. Ella thought she had told him, but, admittedly had not sent him the sheets.

" How am I to bill them now? It looks so unprofessional to re-bill for the previous month!" Bill had continued ranting for a while, until Ella thought she had better pluck up the courage to give him the list of supplies they needed and request some more petty cash. Bill blew big time!

"Ella! How am I supposed to keep the books if I don’t have any idea of what is needed. Here is $50 for now, but, you are going to have to wait until this mess is sorted out before I can look at the main list! I am still going through the file of stuff you hoarded last month and applying the cheques you never gave me on time. Oh! and by the way, would you dig out all the invoices etc. for the past year as the auditors will be coming in next week. Linda usually handles this and as I am going to spend some time with her I think you could handle this for me." Bill left.

Poor Ella had felt her confidence slowly ebbing away. If she couldn’t handle day to day accounts how in the world was she going to handle the auditors. The phone rang. It was Linda. After pleasantries and enquiries about her mothers health, Linda excitedly asked Ella what she had thought about the family groupings idea. Ella cautiously said it looked interesting.

"Well, Ella I want you to initiate this as soon as possible as I am very excited about this and am sure that this is the way to go. I am presuming the staff have read all the stuff I sent you, so they are primed. So - please tell the staff at this weeks staff meeting that it is going to be initiated and possibly get a newsletter out to tell the parents next week. Then we can start working on it to begin next month. I have given this a lot of thought and I feel that this seems like a fair time line. OOPS, I had better go as Mom is calling. Call me if you have any concerns. Bye!"

So here she is reminiscing about her elation when she began as director and what was she going to do about the confusion she felt about so many things now? The staff had not seen the information on family groupings and Ella also knows that they would not take kindly to it. Ella had always spent more time on the floor than Linda and Ella knew that most of the staff did not take kindly to change. Doesn’t Linda remember what happened when they started encouraging the staff to be more child centered? After what seemed months of Ella and sometimes Linda going into the classrooms and demonstrating what they wanted and giving the staff articles etc. the staff and there own evaluations came back very negative and they had to start all over again - more slowly this time. Ella now thinks that this job is going to be too much for her. How had Linda managed all these years? Then a new thought came into Ella’s head - possibly Bill and Linda were being unreasonable. Yes, Ella decided that she had to sit down and list the issues she needed to talk to them about. Possibly after clearing the air of confusion, laying down some ground rules and lines of communication she could handle this job after all.