Would this work...thinking about childminding

[tefal]

My plan (not really spent an age looking into things yet) is to do before school care, drop children at bus and then do the same when school comes out until between 6 and 7 pm at night.

This leaves me free in the day to have 1-1 with my son who is 2 now but I hope to be doing this when he's 3. He'd have his free nursery place in the mornings hopefully.

I am going to be totally upfront from the start that I don't want this to be full-time all day.

To the minders out there does this make sense. Could it work?

Next is feeing. I know pretty much what I will charge but I am confused as to what happens for part hours? Say for instance a child is dropped off at 8 and I put them on the school bus at 8.45 do you charge an hour or 45 minutes? Similarly when the pick up happens after school the bus would drop off between 3.15 and 3.20. How do you calculate part hours?

Thanks for any tips.

I charge a set fee before or after school because you might have children dropped off at 8:35 or 7:30

You won't make much money

But with 1 DS you can have up to 5 under 8's

You might do better with a drop off at school rather than the bus

Thanks very much. The area where we are possibly moving to uses a bus drop off from the village to the town but that isn't set in stone yet. We may end up in another village that would be a school drop and pick up.

Will there be any demand for before/after school care? Trying to find that out may be tricky - maybe a village newsletter could be used to ask parents in the village.

Yes, there is. From talking to parents they tend to send their children to private nursery or childminders in the town next to where we want to live. It is about a 8 minute drive away.

Obviously, that doesn't mean they will all come flooding to me!

would you consider taking the morning/afterschoolies in hols/inset days? this might make you more attractive to prospective parents

I know minders who do before and after schoolies only and they make a bit of money but the real moolah is to be made with the tinies

I have an after schoolie and charge per hour

Thanks Pedlars. Not thought that far in advance yet but yes, I'd probably do inset days/polling station days etc.

Do you become less appealing if you take time off over the Summer. Say 2 weeks for your own holidays or do you just give loads of notice?

I am not sure if I want to do under 5's. May be it is just because within an hour of my son getting up this morning he'd already dialled 999 and then drew with chalk all over the walls!

From talking to parents they tend to send their children to private nursery or childminders in the town next to where we want to live.

Isn't that full day care though... rather than just before/after school?