Childminding diaries

[mumofone]

I do a daily diary for one set of parents who requested it, if ofsted came would they want to see this? Also it contains lots of info re. Activities the child does each day etc so what if the diary was lost or the child wasn't with me that day? What do you all do with regards to this? Or am I worrying over nothing?!!

[BallyH]

In my experience Ofsted will look at them, but maybe only the books belonging to the children on inspection day. I have no back-up. When I got the 'phone call' I gathered all the diaries and held on to them till after my inspection in case a parent forgot to bring it on inspection morning. Mine are very detailed and I didn't want to risk one going missing before hand.

[halor]

When I had my inspection they didn't look at the diaries. She focuses more on the baseline, termly reports (not everyone does these so I don't think they're a necessity) medical forms, registration and other developmental bits n bobs. She only looked at the children I had on the day x

[moggy]

Some inspectors will, some won't.
The fact that you have them and use them is important as it shows how you work with parents.
You may have talked about how you use them in your SEF (or however you self-reflect) so it is evidenced there too.
How the parents feel about them is also evidence- what parents say to the inspector, or what they write in a letter to inspector, is important too.

[loocyloo]

My inspector glanced at the diary for the child she was focusing on and I showed her another as that mum is great at sharing!

[Maza]

At both my inspections (including the no children on role inspection) the inspectors read them quite thoroughly. I held onto one diary from one child when he left to show the inspector. My parents were always really, really good at sending he diaries in every day, so I never worried about them not being in on inspection day. At least I knew that it was unlikely that they would all forget them on the same day.

[blue bear]

Mine read the one diary I'd put on the side half filled in for the day, she had looked at other pages because she commented about things written in there from weeks before.

[FloraDora]

I use an online system so no worries about it getting lost.
Inspector read mine quite thoroughly...I think she was finding statements that she could use as evidence towards my outstanding grade.....I know she had found some things she wrote from this source.