Reference for CM

[bozette]

My son is leaving our lovely CM and she's asked me for a reference. I'm more than happy to provide on but wanted some advice on how to phrase it so its as useful as possible.

She's lovely, reliable, flexible, caring and my son adores her and her family and it is his second home. But how should that be phrased in a reference for a CM? I know that in my profession references must contain particular phrases and wondered what to put.

Thanks for any advice!

Phrase it as a parent to another parent.
What would you want to know/hear if you were looking at a reference of a childminder.

Warm, welcoming,open, clear, professional, knowledgable
sensitive to you/child/family
clean/tidy home
understood your child well
flexible, fun, enthusiastic
worked well with you - the parent
genuine

I think its lovely that you are taking the time to do this and that you care enough to want to make it 'right' :D

Maybe mention how smoothly the settling in period went, because a new parent will want to know that?

I have a references page on my website with several on there if that's any help? In case it is, my website is here

I love your web-site looney, was it difficult to set up? I have thought about it in the past but haven't felt I have enough computer knowledge to do it. Yours is lovely.

Rosie - I built my own site before this one but I was offered this as a freebie from one of my mindee families who run a successful ecommerce business. This site would have cost be about £4000 if I'd have been a big company paying for this. I'm VERY lucky to have something like this, they were doing a project and testing a new person's ability so it was good for them too plus I gave a glowing reference. You can build your own site quite easy via freewebs etc. (they have templates and you just fill bits in) but it's a long time since I did anything like this myself.

thanks very much ladies, very helpful. great website, looneytune!!