Childminder flaked on us & stressed about getting childcare in time for returning to work after mat leave

[Dallidalli]

Long story short due to miscommunication our child minder arrangements fell through and I am now hunting down every available person 7 weeks before I'm due to return to work.

This fucking sucks. We have no family near by, friends are not child experienced or can't commit to regular child care.

We left it too long to search for child care as well but no way did I expect it to be this hard to find suitable arrangements...All nurseries are either full or only offer two days so yeah beating myself up over that already.

I am angry. I feel screwed over I feel desperate. If I can't find child care I have to hand in my notice as I see no way out.

Here is what happened with the Childminder:
Met at her house all good we want to go ahead with her.
Went to hers a second time, I read her policies and we both sign the contract and I take a copy home. she texted her bank details.
She said it's ok if I pay by the end of the month the retainer I do no t have to pay the two weeks left in September.
Moving forward to today I sent her the retainer money and a text if she got it and if we could chat (two weeks have past since last contact)
She then texted back saying she didn't hear from me and we didn't returned the contract(false!!) so she doesn't have the days available anymore. I texted back saying I did sign and she texted she is positive I took the contact home but can't check now as she at softplay. Texted her at 4pm if she checked, she called me and said because she didn't hear from me afte she texted her bank details that I wasn't interested. I told her but we did sign the contract. She proceeded to tell me that she will be having an operation beginning of December for her pace maker and her brother died two months ago and she just couldn't be bothered chasing up people that don't seem interested (but we signed the contract at least she could have given me a heads up?????!!)

She did apologise for not checking the paperwork properly and so did I for not being in touch and she also send my money back.

I just can't shake that I should have been more angry with her but at the same time I felt I'd rather invest that energy into looking for a new childminder (called up 8 and will visit 2 tomorrow)

Man I'm just fed up. Part of me thought I should have really told her to get fucked but she also stays near by and I didn't want to make it awkward if we crossed paths again.
Just feeling let down.

Anyone else struggling to get childcare or had flaky childminders?

xx

Our childminder gave us 2 weeks notice when DC1 was about a year old. Right before Easter. It was mega stressful as we lived in an area without much childcare and all the CMs and nurseries were full. I ended up calling the council, who keep a list of registered childminders, and they told me about someone just registering who hadn’t started advertising yet. DC ended up going to her and stayed with her for years until we moved away. We still talk of her fondly! So might be worth trying the council?

Good luck!

Note I am somewhat glad she bailed as I had a weird feeling about her guess that was it

Aww I'm sorry you went through that! Yes I am hoping that our very own Mary Poppins will come our way haha

Childcare.co.uk

You can search for all care settings around you.
It tells you if they have space etc before messaging them.

You didn't pay the deposit so you didn't secure the place.
Childminders have to deal with loads of timewasters who are really interested until it comes to putting the money down.

Take it as a lesson that next time, you need to pay asap or the place isn't yours.

I never paid a deposit for my CM.

However I learnt something from having discussions with a couple of tradesmen I hired - if you both agree something verbally e.g. paying a deposit later make sure you text/email the person what you both agreed this. That way neither of you can argue about it later.

Childminders are generally messed around so so much (not suggesting you had these intentions) that a general rule of thumb is the place isn't secure until the contracts are signed and the money is paid. Seems there has been a misunderstanding somewhere along the line here. I wouldn't be too hard on the cm tho. It literally happens all the time to us where people say they defo want the place and you never hear from them again. Sometimes it's just not worth chasing it up, just assume they're not interested.

We had this with our childminder for DS2. We thought we had arranged for him to go to hers as she had looked after DS1 and was also going to do wrap around care for DS1, however when I rang her to finalise everything she said she had given his space away,

All very stressful.

In the end DS2 went to a nursery for a short time and then on to a newly reg'd childminder. (which didn't work out either as by then we had one child in wrap around care with one CM and another elsewhere. We finally managed to get both boys with the same CM after a LOT of faffing around!)

Verbal contracts are enforceable. If she’d said that it’s fine to pay the deposit at the end of the month - and contacts are signed that’s pretty solid.
sje sounds flakey anyway. OP