Unregistered childminders - please help us stamp them out!

[frannikin]

A couple of my friends and I are fed up with people advertisting themselves as childminders on Gumtree when they aren't registered with OFSTED and also offering nannying/babysitting in their own home, so please help us eradicate them from Gumtree.

You can report any unregistered childminders to Gumtree because it's illegal to be one. In the bottom right hand corner of the ad there is an option to report the posting to Gumtree admin. If you then choose the option "Illegal/fraudulent ad" and type into the comment box that this person is an unregistered childminder and if providing care in their own home must by law be registered with OFSTED we might get somewhere.

Please help!

I often report ads on Gumtree (to Gumtree Admin), not usually because they are illegal, but because they are in the wrong section. Quite often I see ads from people wanting work, who are posting in the jobs sections rather than in Work Wanted.
This week people are behaving themselves, no posts to report in the Nanny/Babysitting section at guildford.gumtree.com

How would you know if someone was an unregistered childminder? It's very hard to tell, as I've never seen any adverts which give a registration number. Therefore, best just to report ads which are in the wrong sections - gumtree remove those promptly.

I was just going to say, how do we know they are unregistered? Agree about stopping it but not sure how we'd know

Would love to stop it I had a call yesterday from a potential new family because their current cm is leaving my village, I am the only registered cm in my village!!!

We e-mail them and ask them - never saying that we're a parent looking for childcare or anything but just "Are you registered by OFSTED?".

The ones that are say "Yes" and don't mind if we ask for their registration number, the ones that aren't either say "yes" and then don't have a registration number or just say "no" straight off. The ones that say no we say you need to be registered to provide what you're advertising, and we've never had a negative response - usually "oh, I didn't know".

My local Gumtree don't remove ads in the wrong section anyway despite the fact we nag them about it constantly. It makes it really difficult if you are looking for work to actually find any!

Just out of curiosity who are 'we' frannikin? Are you part of an organisation?

Jenna

(and just for the record I am registered with ofsted lol)

Sorry Frannikin just read the original post again and I realise it is you and a few friends who are the 'we'.

Jenna

An unregistered childminder can mind for two hours a day legally

Up to 2 hours, so that's 1h 59m and 59s

Can exceed that time period on 5 occasions in a year (may even be 6 times, it's late... I'm not looking it up!).

However, I think the point here is that some people advertising childminding, are not registered childminders and are intending to provide care for more than 2 hours and for more than 5 days a year.