I’ve been asked to look after a couple of children (5 and 7 years old) by friends at my daughter’s school. It would be less than two hours in the afternoon. Another friend of mine who is a registered childminder said I’d also need to be registered so I started to look into it.
However I came across a document (page attached) on the OFSTED website; Registration Not Required – A Childcare Factsheet (March 2015). It lists 18 scenarios in which you can look after children without being registered and accept payment which goes against almost everything I’ve read on Mumnset Forums. I thought it would be illegal to accep any payment. I also phoned OFSTED for clarification and was told it would be fine.
The two scenarios in the list which apply to me are:
1 If you provide care where a child does not stay with you for more than two hours a day, even if your childcare service is open for longer than two hours.
2 If you only care for the children of one or more friends in your own home or someone else’s home: if no money or payment changes hands; for three hours or less per day, and some payment is made.
Point 2 clearly states that payment can change hands if the care is less than 3 hours for children of a friend. Point 1 also states that it is OK to be unregistered and does not reference payment at all which suggests that it is not an issue.
As I said, I called OFSTED to clarify these points as I do not intend to do more than 2 hours a day and they said it was fine to be unregistered and accept payment in either scenario. Thought this may be useful to those looking to do a similar job without being registered.