Whether you are a childminder working on your own, with an assistant or co-childminder, or a group provider with lots of staff, it can be helpful to think ahead and plan for the future.
Here are some of the things we do in our early years setting to ensure we are ready for September and the challenges of a new term:
**Contracts: we review contracts with parents in August, so they are ready to go for the September fees. This process includes increasing fees for all families (as stated in our Fees Policy) and asking parents to check their details on other forms: emergency contact information, permissions, child’s allergies etc to ensure everything we hold about them is up to date and accurate.
If you want to give your new parent forms a wash and brush up ready for September, you will find examples which you can use ‘as is’ or adapt (if you are a Childcare.co.uk gold member) here –
https://www.childcare.co.uk/childminders/newparents.
**Reflection: we sit down together and reflect on the past year and think about what we might want to change in the next year. These shared goals are an important part of what we do here, to ensure we are continually pushing forwards. For example, last year we said that we wanted to improve our garden, so we have done a little something every month to make it a better learning environment for the children.
There are some useful childminder audits from Childcare.co.uk which will help you to focus on different areas of your provision and support changes in practice here –
https://www.childcare.co.uk/childminders/audits.
**Parent feedback: we ask parents for feedback – when we give them their new contracts and fees information, we include a feedback form. We have done all sorts of forms over the years and it really depends on the parents as to which they prefer, but we provide them with a written and online option so they can choose.
Parent feedback informs our practice over the coming year, to ensure we are always meeting their expectations and their child’s care and learning needs.
There is a free feedback form in the Childcare.co.uk Childminder Organiser here – https://www.childcare.co.uk/childminderpaperwork.
**Paperwork: we review our paperwork – since our Ofsted inspection in May 2022, we have pared back our documentation even more, which leaves extra time for playing with the children during the day and relaxing in the evenings. We thought long and hard about this one because we have always done a certain amount of extra documentation, to help us accurately assess progress, but our inspector was not interested in it and we reflected on why we were doing it and decided that it was no longer necessary.
Other paperwork we review includes our permission forms for parents, medication and accident forms, safeguarding folder and parent file which contains things like our certificates and insurance documents.
You might find the statutory record keeping forms from Childcare.co.uk useful –
https://www.childcare.co.uk/childminders/recordkeeping.
**New children: if we know we have new children joining us in September, we plan for their transitions by asking parents to complete the necessary documentation and welcoming the children for settling in sessions through the summer. We have noticed that, post-pandemic, new children are finding it much harder to settle into the setting, so we have increased the number of settling in sessions we offer and ensure one of us is available to the child if needed.
You will find that a set of well written, supportive policies and procedures help parents to feel secure when they are leaving their child in your setting for the first time. There are free policies from Childcare.co.uk available for you to download from this link –
https://www.childcare.co.uk/childminderpolicies.
**Parent communication: we review our parent communication tools to ensure they continue to meet our needs. We usually ask parents how they prefer to be contacted and we share some of the ways we can do this, including email for important documents and WhatsApp for daily quick conversations, photos etc. We have looked at various online software options but find they are not for us – WhatsApp for photos and day-to-day conversations and email for document sharing currently continue to offer everything we need. However, we are always keeping updated with the latest options to ensure we offer the best service to parents and families and regularly review new systems and ways of working.
**Children's files: we update what we record in the children’s files. We have, as already mentioned, cut down on our documentation since our recent Ofsted inspection in May 2022. We used to complete a play plan every week for each child but our inspector wasn’t interested and parents of older children, when asked, said the files were put in a cupboard and not looked at once they went home, so we reviewed and now rely on our daily WhatsApp photos home, alongside a termly review using the Birth to 5 Matters guidance as a starting point, alongside the Quick Assessment Checks from Childcare.co.uk, which help to inform our curriculum as well as assessment.
You can read feedback from our Ofsted recent inspection here –
https://independentchildminders.weebly.com/blog/an-inspector-calls.
**Plan ahead: we try to plan ahead (as much as we can in this job) and think about other things we need to cover through the coming year – for example, whether we have any children preparing to go to school, progress checks at 2 we will need to write or anything else we might need to change, tweak or adapt for the current and next cohort of children.
You will find recently updated preparing for school guides from Childcare.co.uk here –
https://www.childcare.co.uk/information/school-readiness-for-childminders.
You will find free progress check at 2 guidance from Childcare.co.uk here –
https://www.childcare.co.uk/eyfs.
And new guidance from the Dept for Education here –
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1076430/Progress_check_at_age_two_non-statutory_guidance_for_the_early_years_foundation_stage_.pdf
**Curriculum: we think about the children who will be in our setting for the coming terms and what they need from us. I have already mentioned curriculum – we think about what we want to cover with the children through the coming weeks and months / Autumn and Winter and jot it down, so we don’t miss anything. This is delivered, of course, alongside our daily routines and high-quality continuous provision.
In our early years setting, we use a combination of our own curriculum which is available for Childcare.co.uk gold members to download from here –
https://www.childcare.co.uk/eyfs.
And the Birth to 5 Matters non-statutory guidance –
https://birthto5matters.org.uk/.
We have also read through the new Development Matters 2021 non-statutory guidance to inform our curriculum and ensure we are covering all the requirements in the educational programmes in the EYFS statutory framework –
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/development-matters--2.
We love sharing our tips with other providers in this blog. Do you have a burning question you would like me to write about in a future blog? Is there anything you want me to talk about, to help your professional development? Please let me know in the feedback below and I will look into it for you.
Chat soon, Sarah.
Photo credit: September equinox facts