Experience of shared childcare with other mothers

[Rebelmamma]

I know that in the past women in local communities shared childcare so they could work etc and I'm interested in setting something up, sort of a mother's cooperative childcare scheme. Does anyone have any experiences of this way of working out childcare?

I was part of one of these years ago. There was one paid worker, who was there all the time, and supervised the volunteers. These were the mums of the children who were there, generally single parents, and yes, from memory all mums not dads. You got the equivalent amount of childcare for the hours you put in. As many of those who used it were single parents, they had to bring their own children when they were volunteering, which meant the children spent A LOT of time there. You had to use a minimum number of hours iirc. I think this was because otherwise there was too much coming and going which was unsettling for the kids. You had to book it in advance so they could balance out the numbers. It was only used by people who really had no other choice; it was very hard work as if you were doing it to access paid work, it meant you had essentially another job as a nursery worker on top of that. The venue was funded by a grant from somewhere, I can't remember what. It could even have been the Council as it was quite a deprived area.
This was also before PVG, minumum wage legislation and so on, I don't know how that would have affected it. Also before the tax/ofsted case about the policewomen babysitting for each other, here: www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/sep/28/government-orders-review-babysitting-police . I don't know what happened about that in the end sorry not much help on that front!