What do parents in Bristol expect of childminders, and what can be improved?

[ZoeCarpenter]

Hi,

I'm Zoe, and I'm interested in becoming a Childminder in the Bristol/South Glos area. From my experience, I can see that childcare is very much the same and very traditional. I would like to adapt childcare to make it a little more flexible, particularly to help parents who work shifts.

I've had a couple of idea and I was wondering if I could have some opinions from parents.

(1) I'd like to provide Emergency care for parents, which require no bookings or up-front fees. To ensure that a line doesn't form outside of my house, parents who require quick convenient childcare, will need to ring to check the space available (as a childminder, I'd only be allowed to care for so many children at one time). Parents can also make reservations to ensure they can have childcare on a specific day.

(2) I'd also like to provide Over-night care. This would require bookings. This sort of childcare would particularly suit parents who work nights and want to use a childminder, instead of a nanny. I'm not sure if this type of childcare has been made available by childminders, but I think it's an important thing to think about.

Would parents be interested in this type of childcare, and would you find it useful?

Also, how much would parents be willing to pay for this type of childcare?

Is there any particular days which parents would find the most useful for childcare?

Is there anything else that should be included, or parents would be interested in for there child's care?

Any suggestions or opinions are helpful.

Thanks! :)

I used to work as a CM, but I'm a bit out of date as I was last registered in 2005 and I now live overseas.

I'm sure someone more up to date will have more info

but I would advise you to consider how you will manage being potentially full sometimes and have no work other times if you don't have contracted hours.
How will this impact your family budget if you can't predict what you will be earning?

I used to provide early morning/late night care for one family (both parents worked for the NHS) on and as needed basis (sometimes the gran had DC), but their DC was over 8, so didn't impact my "high earning" under 5 places, and I saw those earnings as "extra", whereas my under 5s were the "bread and butter".

So are you going to leave one of your spaces permanently unfilled so that you can offer occasional emergency cover?
I'm happy to offer ad hoc cover if i have a space, but if someone comes along wanting to contract decent hours for that space, that's who I'm going to give it to!
Opportunity cost and all that.

Yeah, exactly that really. Like I said, parents can chose hours and days that they'd like if they need it. I forgot to mention, that I've set days that I'd like to work and ten hours each of those days, plus the one night. If people ask for other days to be made available or more nights/evenings instead of days, then I'd be happy to make changes. That's why I'd like opinions from parents to see what people like the most.

As others have said, you might find some weeks you have no work at all. People might phone up and see if you can take their DC for a couple of hours while they go to the hairdresser. Shift workers would love the availability of overnight and might then book you for all their shifts a month in advance. If you only have one child, you will be earning less than minimum wage. Would you work weekends?

As a regular income, it won't work (I don't think). If it's just extra family spending money, then it might be worth trying it, to see how it goes.

Hi,
I am a Bristol childminder. I am registered for overnights, but I have never been asked to do it - probably because the families I work with are not shift workers. I think your plan would be very useful to parents, but hard for you to make money out of - depending as said above, whether this is your sole income or extra cash.

The other problem I forsee, is that most parents like to have settling in sessions and build some sort of relationship with their childminder prior to leaving their child for the first time. You would get this eventually if you had repeat ad-hoc business, but it would be hard to get started I think.

There is a website called I think emergencychildcare.co.uk which you could register with as a nanny/babysitter initially to see how much interest you get, prior to going through the hassle of childminder registration.

I feel I earn reasonable money through childminding, as I have 3 little ones in the daytime and up to 6 after school, 3 days per week, term time only. I think you would run the risk of having one child at a time which is not really financially viable.

Good luck with it.

Thanks for all your messages, that's really helpful.