New childminder - not sure how this works

[TheHamish]

I'm a brand new childminder, looking at taking on my first mindees.

I have been approached by a lovely family with children aged 3.5 and 18 months, however it's only 3 days a week, term time only. I have my own DD, same age as the 3.5yr old. They are preschool friends. Perfect!

However, in January the 3.5yr old has the option of starting nursery, which is full time days, so I would just be wrap around care for her.

Parents have a deal with current childminder where they pay her half rate while their DD is at pre-school and want this to continue.

I cannot see how it would be finacially viable for me to have an EY aged child in afterschool hours only, when I have little chance of filling that daytime space, effectively leaving me with only one under 5 in my care.

What would others charge in this situation?

Financially, if they were th

Ignore last sentence, annoying iPad posting mistake.

Are you going to be on-call to collect her if she is ill?
Will you be providing care when she is sick? During holidays?

I regret taking on a preschool wrap around child, at the time she filled a gap but now I'm stuck with a 9-3 space and don't have her in the holidays either. You can't be on call for sickness as you shouldn't have poorly children. It depends if taking on the younger sibling would be enough income wise for you to loose the other place.

No, it's a term time only contract, and yes, I would be on call to a certain extent but obviously not to pick up if mindee is ill with something infectious that would normally exclude her from my setting. But in the event of school heating breaking down etc then, yes, I would be on call.

Sorry, wishIwasonholiday, x posted there.

If I could get school holiday mindees then yes, it could possibly work financially, but there are no guarantees that I will find them. It's so typical, there's a downside with every family that approach me - three so far have been lovely but one was too few hours, one was too many hours, couldn't have done them both together as lack of car space, it's much trickier than I thought to fill my spaces.

I think what the former CM does is quite a common arrangement. Obviously you would like to be earning the whole day, the parents would probably ideally not want to pay at all while their LO is at pre-school, so half fees is a compromise on both sides. So I don't think it is unreasonable of them to ask this, but if you cannot manage on the income and you think you can get a full time mindee instead, you will have to turn them down. I don't know if this would be a feasible option, but when I have had LOs starting preschool they have taken both morning and afternoon sessions on the same day so that they have had a couple of full days at pre-school (leaving me with a space I can easily fill) and two or three days with me,

I'm left now with a car full of after schoolers from sept which I can't afford to do financially and do some will have to be given notice, hopefully I can work with parents to see if they can find alternatives on certain days. I used to be full holidays and variations every day in term time now I have a full time space coming up and no holiday children at all and no enquiries coming in.

Sympathies Wishiwasonholiday; one of the pitfalls of this job is that the demand ebbs and flows so much and it is so unpredictable that it is almost impossible to plan ahead. When you have no space you have too many enquiries, and when you do have space nobody calls for weeks, or you only get enquiries from people wanting a place in six months time! I think a lot of us go into this without fully appreciating how challenging it can be to keep spaces filled and a reasonable income coming in. I have children on a waiting list for places next year, but have places to fill in September, so who knows how that will turn out .