If you find an ofsted report that makes you like the sound of a particular childminder...

[Skegness]

...how can you find out his/her details to see if s/he's really as fab in the flesh and has vacancies? The reports only give a reference number so I'm confused.

Unfortunately there is no quick way of finding out. This is because of privacy reasons for Childminders as we usually work alone from home it was decided that Ofsted would not publish our adresses & only our Registration Number.
You might be able to tie the report in with a Childminder by searching on the Direct Gov website for Childminders as long as the same postcode is used for both Ofsted & Direct Gov. searches they would probably come out in a similar order and by cross checking registration details on both sites you might well find out who the childminder is you're interested in. I am not sure but your local Family/Children's Information Service might be able to tie up the details for you but again they would probably have to ask the childminder for permission to pass on the details because of the disclosurer of the address & registration number together.
Good Luck in your search.

If you give me the reg number I can find her. My DP has written a programme that reads Ofsted's database and cross references it with direct.gov.

You can email me if you'd rather [email protected]

You can search on the direct gov website by registration number instead of postcode.

I can't get DirectGov to give me childminder details based on Registration Number. Maybe that only works in some LA areas.

One way of perhaps matching things up is to play with the Postcode searchs.
For example, search the Ofsted website and get it such that the URN displayed at the top of the list, is the one you are after. Then use that postcode to search DirectGov and the top entry on that MAY be the childminder. Or of course it MAY not.

You can't do it by postcode searches unfortunately. When you put my postcode in you just get a list of all childcarers (including nurseries & preschools) in the area - although it shows the estimated distance this figure appears to be some sort of vague geographical grouping they use, not the actual physical distance in the real world. Eg, I am the only childminder with my postcode, yet I am on page 3 of over 20 pages of results, apparently 2 miles away from myself. Whereas carers who are 8 miles away are at the top of the list!

One way to narrow it down could have been to look on the Ofsted report for the date of registration and then go through the direct.gov listings one by one and look under Other details for the matching date of registration. But the dates don't always match, and I know that other childminders were registered on different dates to that shown on the direct.gov site.

Thanks everyone. That sounds amazing, navyeyelasH! I'll email you.

Interesting nannynick - the only way I show up at all at the moment is by using my registration number! Good old centralised systems eh!