Childminder wants to close at 1pm for the rest of the week

[SweatySpider321]

Woke to a text from my childminder, announcing due to the weather we need to try to collect our children at 1pm for the rest of the week -530pm is the usual finish time. I’m not even a week into a new job and my husband has no leave left (mainly due to covering her annual leave). It’s not in our contract and it’s funded hours we use with her

but it’s not red, it’s going to be 32. That’s not danger to life.

''All she has to do is sit in her house, fans on, AC on, draw the curtains, ice lollies, cold drinks, cartoons on. It’s not rocket science.''

@SurelyNotShirley is that seriously your opinion of a childminder's job???
Hugely disrespectful and - quite frankly - patronising.

There is no red warning where she is

Only 26 and she's closing?! The school I work at was 34 yesterday and we didn't close, you definitely need a new childminder.

Also please remember if you want to be THAT parent then the childminder can very easily find a family that doesn't behave that way. They don't have to care for your child

Are you for real? Your statement is grossly inaccurate, and hugely annoyingly.
”parents don’t pay for anything” 🤦‍♀️
Well, my £1200 nursery bill, for 4 days childcare must have been a nightmare.
It certainly feels like it.

My childminders done the same. Told us she wants our son collected at 2.30 today and tomorrow as she wants to collect her teenage daughters ‘who don’t do well in the heat.’ It’s not like her girls have to usually walk home, they go on a school bus anyway which is running as normal so I’m really stumped as to why they need to be collected at the detriment of my partner and I working! We can’t get out of work early either other than in illness circumstances.

Why? No Schools are closing where I live (same for the OP). There is no red warning.
There is no justification to shut. None.
This is ridiculous and why the productivity gap in the UK is so wide.

A lot of childminders advertise as being a preferred option to a nursery as they provided a home-from-home environment. Therefore there shouldn’t be any difference to safety in these conditions regardless of whether the children are at the childminder’s house or your house.
I would be concerned about her inability to be able to adapt.
I would also be looking for a different childminder as I would be worried about how frequently she will expect you to drop everything and pick up early.

This. A few precautions is all that’s needed. I’m in a red area - everything is operating normally.

It was a valid question. Given that this particular childminder is a proven liar, it is fair enough to ask.

I am

I’m a childminder and yesterday our LA sent us an email encouraging all childminder settings to close and on the email it says that no-one will loose any funding if they choose to close and they won’t ask for it to be repaid back.
after this email was sent most of the Childminders in my local area announced they were closing on our childminding forum so I guess that when they “got permission” it was an easy decision for them!

I chose to stay open as my house will be the same temp as their houses, I have my own little one here too so I’m keeping her cool just as much as the other little ones and most of Chilminding parents are super busy at work at the moment.
however I’m in good health and so is my baby - if there was a health issue with us I would probably close so maybe your childminder has a health issue?

also there’s a lot of info being sent to us about safe sleep (do to recent deaths of babies) so maybe some childminders are worried their houses will be too hot for safe sleep?

its tricky! I have parents whose older children are off school today but they sent their babies to me (and rightly so as I’m open) but they can work with their older children at home, it’s harder to work with babies around which is why I chose to stay open.

its annoying though for you! Especially with no notice at all!!

OP has stated repeatedly, multiple times through the thread - their area is NOT under the red warning.

I'm in the red area and everything is most certainly not operating as normal.

"Proven liar"
You've got one side of a story, which OP drip fed in on a later post.

Most people don't have aircon in their houses!! She needs to get some fans, it's ridiculous.

I’m not agreeing with it at all, but even if none of the schools in your area have closed, I’d be very surprised if they aren’t offering early pick up, and your childminder is following suit. Our school wasn’t planning to and then they got some quite heavy heavily worded memos come through for the department for education that spooked them, and your childminder will perhaps have been privy to that kind of thing through early years support, so they do feel under pressure to offer that option. So it isn’t necessarily that she just wants to sit in the garden, but that she’s worrying about doing the right thing by the children and parents, because our school has had just as many parents complaining about early pick up as they’ve had parents calling and shouting at them for not closing. And this is clearly an extraordinary few days, so I wouldn’t assume she is workshy and it will be a pattern for the whole summer.

One of our staff had to leave early at 3pm yesterday as their childminder phoned him to say his little girl was utterly inconsolable with the heat and could he collect her.

My goodness, can people really not read any more? Obviously she means the house of one of the families she works for. Unless you think she specifically went out and bought another house to work as a nanny in? Read it again.

That's silly. Not everything that is not mentioned in an initial post is automatically a drip feed.

On MN we only ever get one side of a story. If you are going to disbelieve everything a poster says, there is not much point of being on the board really.

today we have come to my house for paddling pool/sprinkler fun and indoor play
She can't work from her house unless registered as a childminder.

There is a huge difference between a school and a nursery and, even more so, a childminder setting. 30 kids sitting baking in a classroom is not the same as younger children settings where there are substantially fewer children and more flexibility around activities etc.

She shouldn't advertise as a full-time childcare service if she isn't full-time. Dropping days whenever she feels like it isn't how childcare works.

You either do it for your advertised hours OR you amend them and watch your regulars move to a nursery/someone reliable.

A top temperature of 26 is just a warm day. What next? Cancelled due to rain?