Do I have to work with quality assurance

[mum67]

Hi everyone

I've been registered a short while now and am supposed to have a quality assurance key worker who visits to help me. The thing is she never turns up when we've made arrangements, I'm beginning to feel somebody wants me to fail when it comes to my first inspection. I went through my registration alone, a total nervous wreck but passed and have been getting on fine with everything else since, when she heard I was registered she made contact and seemed shocked and wanted to start visiting me all of a sudden. She has turned up once since then.
I must add without the help of Rickysmiths and everyone else on here I could never have done it as there is so much involved.

No contact is made to let me know why she hasn't turned up and no contact to rearrange, this has happened at least four times now.

All I want to do is become a great childminder who the children and parents enjoy coming to and obviously make a decent living from it. I can't take on 2, 3&4 year old funding without the LA's help until I am graded and have read and printed everything I can find off here and from Ofsted to make my provision the best I can.
Surely if someone is paid to help you they should take it seriously and at least acknowledge you.
Does this happen often with local authorities or just certain key workers?
I am quite happy to get on with things on my own and from the wealth of advice from the forum but not sure if I am supposed to work with them.
The Ofsted lady was concerned nobody had been to see me for the best of 5 months but never suggested what I should do about it.

I could not be so ignorant to people to make arrangements with them and totally ignore them.

Thanks

[mum67]

Sorry just realised I posted in the wrong place,could it be moved to the relevant area please?
Thanks

[sarah707]

It is not a requirement of the Eyfs to work with anyone - it's totally up to you whether you welcome them into your business and take their advice.

I think it's very shabby that they are letting you down.

We are here to help - there is a huge amount of support in free resources at the top of the forum - and lots of experience.

Hugs xx

[Simona]

Good question...since Ofsted are the 'sole arbitrer of quality'...I wonder what your LA is up to?
Unfortunately each of the 152 LAs have their own rules and conditions so hard to compare

QA can also be achieved via representing associations...I know PLA offers a package but not sure if it is for cms as well...will ask
Pacey used to have one but they have replaced it with something else...pacey members may be able to offer more info

[k1rstie]

That is poor.

In my local authority ( we are a small one, and have less than 300 childminders), we have loads of development workers with one title or another. We also have members of our accredited network, who act as 'buddy's' to newly gained childminders during their first year (if they wish one).

I cannot recommend this Forum enough, all the help you will need is here, plus loads of free training at Childcare.co.uk for green members - well worth the investment.

I hope that the service they give you improves.

[blue bear]

There are so many cut backs the help the local authority gives has been totally watered down but it's just rude not to ring and apologise when the development worker misses an appointment. Our development workers of late have been great but to be honest I get my most uptodate Information from here.

[mum67]

Thank you all for your replies,

This site is amazing, I have used many of the free resources and the amount of free info on absolutely anything I need to know is unbelievable. I am eventually going to upgrade to gold on childminding.co.uk but just can't afford to squeeze that extra £20 a month just yet.

I was allocated a buddy on pre reg course, still to this day have never met, spoke or had any contact whatsoever from her and she lives miles away from me which I thought was strange as there are lots of childminders in my area.

There is also lots of stuff I have downloaded from the Ofsted website about grading etc and much more which I'm ploughing through, but I will just get on with it by using all the help on here and just take my first grading in my stride.

You are all so helpful and warming thanking you very much:)

[rickysmiths]

Mum67

I moved to Hertfordshire in 2004. No one contacted me even though FIS were told by Ofsted that I had moved into the County. I eventually found the local CM Group through Pacey and went there.

Now at that time in Herts there was a very active Herts CM Association and Herts support for cm training was very very good. We had NCMA Development Workers and a good EY Dept. Cm all around me were getting visits and I have never had one!! From what they all say they weren't much help really the support from colleagues and Forums like this was far more helpful.

I wouldn't worry about this person, she has treated you with utter disrespect. All you can do if you want to is contact your Early Years Dept and speak to the manager and see if they can tell your why you have been treated like this and what would they be coming out to do?

Do you have any cm groups near you? If you don't know your Children's Centre should be able to tell you if there is one and where you may even find they run one. Children Centres now have to work with all the childminder's in their 'patch' they have to prove to Ofsted at inspection that they have physically seen at least 95% (and it maybe higher) of all their cm every year, a new inspection requirement, ours was given inadequate because they were under the required % and also they have to have 95-96% of all under 5s families in their area registered and they didn't quite achieve that either. However they do hold cm meetings every term in the evening for us to get together a maybe have a training or chat about current topics share information and ideas. They also hold 5 'Meet the Childminder' Evenings for parents a year. It gives parents a chance to meet several cm who may have suitable vacancies, see if they like us before they come and visit us in our homes.

If you could forge some local links that will always help. You can always ask on here and feel free to pm me anytime.

[mum67]

Mum67

I moved to Hertfordshire in 2004. No one contacted me even though FIS were told by Ofsted that I had moved into the County. I eventually found the local CM Group through Pacey and went there.

Now at that time in Herts there was a very active Herts CM Association and Herts support for cm training was very very good. We had NCMA Development Workers and a good EY Dept. Cm all around me were getting visits and I have never had one!! From what they all say they weren't much help really the support from colleagues and Forums like this was far more helpful.

I wouldn't worry about this person, she has treated you with utter disrespect. All you can do if you want to is contact your Early Years Dept and speak to the manager and see if they can tell your why you have been treated like this and what would they be coming out to do?

Do you have any cm groups near you? If you don't know your Children's Centre should be able to tell you if there is one and where you may even find they run one. Children Centres now have to work with all the childminder's in their 'patch' they have to prove to Ofsted at inspection that they have physically seen at least 95% (and it maybe higher) of all their cm every year, a new inspection requirement, ours was given inadequate because they were under the required % and also they have to have 95-96% of all under 5s families in their area registered and they didn't quite achieve that either. However they do hold cm meetings every term in the evening for us to get together a maybe have a training or chat about current topics share information and ideas. They also hold 5 'Meet the Childminder' Evenings for parents a year. It gives parents a chance to meet several cm who may have suitable vacancies, see if they like us before they come and visit us in our homes.

If you could forge some local links that will always help. You can always ask on here and feel free to pm me anytime.

Thank you for this reply Rickysmiths, I hadn't noticed until now I have it posted twice so have only just read it. You have been a great help for me on here and I have learnt more from you and the other forum members than I did with her. Strange even more is the fact I have never had an email to invite me to courses or information evenings even though she said she had added me to the mailing list.:huh: