A question for the Childminders...

[Elf1981]

My SIL is a qualified nursery nurse. We were chatting yesterday and she is thinking of becomming a childminder in the future. I told her the age groups of what our childminder can look after, ie one under one etc, but she said that she'd prefer to just look after babies, and not have an age gap.
Does anybody know that if you only look after one age group (ie under ones) how many you can have? I think her ideal plan would be to look after x amounts of under ones and follow them until they go to school iyswim.
Just wondered if anybody could point her in the right direction for information or if anybody knows off the top of their heads.
TIA

I'm not sure she could - the ofsted guidelines is our area are 1 under one year. The only time ofsted suggest that you could have a special license to look agter more than 1 is if they were twins or siblings

I personally didn't think she could look after more than one under the age of one, I know our Childminders list is roughly something like one under one, two more over one but under two / three, then three more under eight IIRC

But for my SIL perhaps three over one would work? Would that be right?

If she only intends to care for pre-schoolers and has lots of experience then she would probably quite easily be granted a variation where she would be permitted to care for two under ones and one over one. I have this variation. But the total would still remain at 3 under fives. It is sometimes allowed to have 4 under fives but that would still only inclde 2 under ones (if the variation had been allowed), and would be for specified times only and is only granted for continuation of care eg siblings.