What is a 'home childcarer'? How does it differ from being a nanny or childminder?

[NannyR]

I've been to training course this evening for nannies and home childcarers and out of the four people that turned up, three of us were nannies and one was a home childcarer. She described her role as being like a childminder but working from the child's home, looking after children from different families, different times and different homes.

I've never come across this before and wondered why it was different to a nanny or nanny share job? Do home childcarers have to do all the paperwork and observations that childminders do, but nannies don't have to? Is it, in effect, a self employed nanny?

It sounds like she was talking nonsense tbh!

Home childcarer is just a term that covers nannies and childminders and au pairs. Just any home-based childcare afaik.

Sounds like she's justifying being a self employed nanny tbh.

I'd say self employed nanny - so works in child's own home but sorts out all her own tax etc

In Ofsted terms if a nanny who looks after a child in that child's home wants to voluntarily be registered with Ofsted so the family can claim tax credits, then they would register as a "home childcarer". That's a separate category of registration from childminders or people running nurseries/pre-schools.

They categorise home childcare as: "Caring for children of up to 2 families at the same time in their homes, eg a nanny or an au pair".

So its not really a different job then, I'm ofsted registered but I call myself a nanny rather than a home childcarer.

Other than a nanny, a Home Childcarer is someone caring for children over the age of 8 either in the child's home or in their [the providers] home (known as an over 8's childminder).

She described her role as being like a childminder but working from the child's home, looking after children from different families, different times and different homes.

So as she is working from the children's homes rather than her home, we would know that as a nanny. Employment status wise each of her jobs would be assessed individually plus the overall picture may be looked at, so it is quite possible that some/all of the work meets self employment but equally it could be a number of different employed jobs.

My local council's Family Information Service call nannies this. It's their justification as to why we "can be self employed". I've had many a discussion with them about it and even spoke to HMRC about it but they don't give a toss and still tell every family and childcarer who gets in touch that they are "home childcarers" and can be self employed regardless of if they're woirking full-time, part-time, for 1 family/5 families, regular hours, irregular hours, etc.

I'm legitimately self employed and employed (I do ad-hoc work and have an employed position) and because I'm on the FIS list I'm contacted often by people who want me to work three days a week or similar on a permanent basis but refuse to believe me when I say that it wouldn't count under my self employed work if it was permanent because the FIS told them otherwise Not that I want another job but a lot of parents were being really pushy between Mid-August and the end of September!