Childminders club- writing policies help!

[ladbrokegrove]

Hi, i am just wondering what sort of issues to cover when writing my policies, any advice greatly appreciated! Also, does anyone have any experience of the "care to learn" grant. Thanks!

When composing my 'handbook' I started off by looking at other childminder's websites for ideas. Then decided what was applicable in my situation and what wasn't. You can re-word stuff, add to it and make it your own.

When my website goes live, I'll post the url on here and I'd be more than happy for other new childminders to use it as a resource!

I used the national standards a lot too!

Just in case it helps, my site is www.helenslittleangels.co.uk. It has all my policies and procedures on but they are currently under review.

I have experiance, what do you need to know?

HellyBelly - I've just had a look at your website it's really good. I started my own a while ago and used the same background but my laptop crashed and I lost it all.

ladbrokegrove - It's a good idea to have a policy about late payments I didn't have one until a few weeks ago and people took the mick with their payments. I used a book called Registered Childminding - The Secrets of Success to help with mine it gives loads of advice about building a portfolio of policies it gives examples as well.

This is the list it gives (You don't need them all just what you think is appropriate):

Behaviour management
"Disease and exclusion
"Equal opportunities
Special Needs
Fees
Collection of child
"Accident and emergency procedure
"Smoking
"Smaking
"Health hygiene and safety
"Nutrition
Daily routines
Settling children in
"Basic play and activities
"Working in partenership with parents
"Child protection
Business practice
"Confidentiality
"Complaints

The ofsted inspector wanted to see the ones marked with a " at my recent inspection but every inspector is different and wants to see different things

Karen
Sorry thats so long!

Oh no Karen23, you must have been soooo annoyed!! You've just reminded me to do a fresh backup for all my sites (build for childminders in spare time) as I'd hate to need to do an update for someone and have lost it

thanks everybody! Bit thick, me. I've done the ICP and of course most of the areas are covered there. It didn't occur to me to adapt them so they were relevant to my situation. Consequently when I started doing this yesterday I paniced and thought I had to reinvent the atom. i've looked at some really good childminders web sites- really helpful.