How can my childminder protect herself at handover time?

[Bettyboobird]

Sorry that title was rather confusing!

We have an au pair starting next week. She will be looking after the girls until lunchtime them dropping dd1 at pre school, and dd2 at the childminders, who is lovely btw.

Today, the childminder told me that she is concerned that because an au pair is not police checked or covered by a governing body, she feels that she will be compromising herself by taking care of dd2 directly from her hands as it were.

I can see where she is coming from, if the girls had an accident in the morning with the au pair, and the childminder wasn't told, we might blame the childminder for the child's injury. I hope that I've explained that okay?

She would feel happier about signing a handover document when the au pair drops dd2 off-basically saying in the lowest of terms, that the childminder has received goods as seen (sorry for the analogy-I obviously take my child's safety very seriously!!)

Does anyone else have any experience of such a document? Is there a copy that I could download from somewhere? If not, and I design my own, is this 'legally binding' enough to cover my childminder?

Thanks for reading xxx

Could you not pay for your au pair to be police checked or would it not work? I'm only familiar with police checking in nursery though so maybe not much help?

what a strange attitude. why is she less "compromised" when she takes delivery from you?

Sorry but guessin you trust both aupair and childminder exlicably as you leavig your dd with her so weres the issue

Sorry but guessin you trust both aupair and childminder exlicably as you leavig your dd with her so weres the issue

She has things in place, in the NCMA Accident book there is a Record of concerns bit, that she can fill out if she has any concerns about how your child is when handed over.

I also get all my parents to sign in with their child, I have a clock by the signing in book, parents sign in the time, so that there is no dispute what time mindee came to me so in the awful thought that something happened, I could prove at which time child was with me.

OK that was rambling but hope you got the gist.

Posted twice and with several spelling mistakes!

Obviously I meant if you trust them both to care for your daughter then where is the issue?

Surely it isn't any different from you dropping dd2 off at the child minders - you probably don't have childcare training, crb checks etc.
If the childminder notices anything upon your dd's arrival - they note it as they would if a parent dropped a child off.

It is much easier for a European (assumes AP is European) to get a police check than it is for us. If you ask they can get it to show a clean record.

If you ask for it (and I have) they regard this as a perfectly reasonable request and can usually get it in short order.

May vary slightly from country to country but has worked for France, Holland and Germany so far.

I think her attitude is pretty weird actually. Shouldn't she be doing what Soshe et al suggested ANYWAY?

Is there any chance that she's getting 'cut out' of extra hours because you now have an au pair? It sounds to me that getting tangled up in the sort of bureaucratic concerns she mentioned is a bit of a red herring.

I used to look after 2 sisters who had au pair drop them and collect. I just got mum to sign a form I put together, authorising me to hand over to au pair (as not parent and was a regular thing). That's it. Don't see the big deal?

I used to look after 2 sisters who had au pair drop them and collect. I just got mum to sign a form I put together, authorising me to hand over to au pair (as not parent and was a regular thing). That's it. Don't see the big deal?

p.s. if a child had an injury etc on arrival, I'd just get au pair to sign the book stating that, just like you have to with a parent!