Childcare advice

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Hello,
If there was a service offering advice on all forms of local childcare including cost, how to save money, where there were places, etc that was completely free to parents, would you use it? If it was completely individual to each family and took all of the hassle out of hunting yourself?

No because our local Children's Information service does all of that for free!

Child Info Services does not include every nanny who is currently looking for the hours that you are offering or which nursery can offer a place to a child of the age of your child for the hours that you are looking for within your set radius and may even take into account time of the day that you will be driving to the nursery and if you are likely to get stuck in traffic everyday. Or if your best option would be to take advantage of the nursery grant in the mornings followed by an afternoon nanny. The service would also be completely free to parents.

how would it be funded?
and how would you be able to keep the info up to date?

Presumably you'd be looking for some sort of subscription or commission from the providers ? So it could n't be comprehensive as you would n't include the likes of Surestart or school nurseries.

Funding is not completey decided yet, few options.
The info would be up to date as each case would be individual so research would be carried out for each new family.
Just wanted some feedback as seem to speak to lots of parents who are not sure of all of the options of childcare and as I have spent many, many years working in all forms of childcare and due to the credit crunch my business isn't doing very well, thought maybe I could put my years of experience to good use and save other people time and money.

Very much a niche maket tbh and you won't eliminate the personal side fo childcare chocie which is probably the most time consuming part. You might be better approaching some large comapnies who could offer it as a service to their staff. Are you planning to be very local or provide a national service

Good idea about the big company. I would go to the parents a few days or a week after they first contact me with, say, five options of places, they would then visit/interview these providers without having to go to every nursery/nanny agency and have to work out how to save money from nursery grant to nanny registration tax cuts to nanny payroll and even talk through alternative early years ed - Montessori,Steiner, etc.
It would have to be local, at first anyway.

From September 2008, it became law that local authorities must provide all parents with information about all kinds of childcare providers, which includes Ofsted Registered Nannies. Further info can be found in the Childcare Act 2006. Admittedly not all local authorities are very good at providing the information at present, but I suspect it will get better over time as the advice teams get more training and as providers such as Nannies find out that their local authority does now want to know about what services they provide.

I've worked in the childcare sector for many years and provide a lot of advice to parents and childcare providers via Mumsnet for free. In the past I did look at providing such information as a consultant, but could not work out how it would actually be funded - who would pay. In the past, LuncheonVouchers had a Childcare Vouchers division which provided the sort of thing you describe to the corporate sector. I don't think they still provide that service, though it may be incorporated into Accor Childcare Vouchers.

While the thing you describe may appeal to some parents, but I don't see it being a viable business proposition - especially if you weren't charging parents for the advice. Who would be paying? Where is the funding coming? Government in my view is unlikely to fund it, as local authorities are already under obligation to provide childcare information to parents.