Childminders- 2 under 1's for one month - what are my chances?

[alison222]

I have been looking after a 6 mth old on a temporaty basis- due to finish at the end of next week.
I have filled the vacancy from the beginning of Sept with an 11 month old.
The parents of the first child are now asking me if I could do 2.5 days from then too.
Both are teachers so I won't have looked after the one with whom I've signed the contract until the end of August.
Do you think OFSTED may allow it on continuity of care? My concern is that I won't actually have looked after the second child but have already signed the contract.
To complicate matters further my certificate needs amending to allow this as my son will go into reception from September but they phase them in slowly and he will only be doing half days until 19th Sept, so technically before that does he still count as an under 5?

Yes, you are allowed to have extra children in an emergency but, as you say Alison, that "emergency" isn't supposed to last for the rest of the day. Technically, if you collected a sick 3yr old from nursery, which meant that you had too many under-fives, you are supposed to make every effort to reduce the number back to your legal level asap. If the unwell child can't be collected for several hours (perhaps parents went to Isle of Wight on business for the day??!), you should send another child home!!! In reality, I don't think any of us would do this!

And another gripe - if you have an under-five of your own, they will be included in your numbers even if they are not on the premises. If you were asked to have one of your mindees for an extra day, for instance, and sent your child to grandma or paid another minder to have them for the day, YOU are still seen as being responsible for them. You cannot "give" that responsibility to anyone else.

OFSTED have been known to tell minders that putting their child's own daddy down as emergency contact for their nursery (so that you could have 3 under-fives to mind) is also not always acceptable.

By the way, I don't make these things up as I go along, these are "incidents" that have cropped up during OFSTED inspections with other minders.