Questions for market research

[RCTLisa]

I have been looking in to doing some research to find out from parents locally what they think/want from a childminder to see if it worth me registering ( I want to but need to know I can earn a living from it)

Does anyone have an ideas of questions I could ask - my mind has gone blank

[Stapleton83]

I would probably ask things like:

- What hours would you look for?

- What price would you expect pay? Or would you be prepared to pay £x including food etc.

- Which school/pre-school would you want collection from?

- What would you look for in a childminder?

- What kind of activities/outings would you like a childminder to offer?

Are they any good, if you can then i would offer tick boxes and then an option to expand on what they want below.

Hope that helps.

Samx

[moggy]

TBH, unless you are planning on sampling hundreds of people it is not going to be clear input for you- you can ask 10 families what they want and get 10 completely different answers (shift work flexibility, early hours, overnight, school runs, late evenings, weekends, additional babysitting etc etc).
Maybe more specific things like checking with local schools whether there is demand for before/after school service (often parents ask at school office to see what is available, or ask around in the playground) and check if schools have their own before/after school clubs (competition!) would be useful.

When setting up it is good to look at what suits you and your family FIRST- what age groups do you love to look after (babies? pre-schoolers? school-age?)? Can you do school runs or not? Do you want to offer early starts- 7am? 6am?! or late evenings or even overnight? Do you want to be flexible to allow shift patterns but then how will you cover income for the sessions when no children are with you? or would you rather steady hours per week? Do you have a particular angle to sell yourself on- are you an outdoors type? Do you cook really great food? are you an artistic crafty type who do loads of arts projects? Are you a gardener who will have the children out there growing their own veg? Have you got experience/skills in special needs/allergies/foreign language...?

Whether you can earn a living from minding- speak to local minders and Early Years support staff at local authority. What are local minders charging? are they busy? is there a gap in the market (like a school in urgent need of pick-up/drop-off service?). What income do you need? you can calculate the hours you need to work and the hourly rate in your area to see if it is going to add up. Remember you have to pay expenses and your own NI and tax. It also often takes a few months to get registered and a few months to get your first mindees in.

There is no harm going along to your free Local Authority pre-reg introduction meeting to see what the local situation is, and go from there.

[sarah707]

Do you have any business parks / big companies locally? You could try speaking to HR about where they advise staff to look for childcare...

Hth

[Petshrinklj]

Hi
It might be worth you talking to your FIS as they will have probably done the work for you. They have to conduct audits to see how childcare needs are bein met. When I phoned (before starting registration process ) they knew how many childminders were in each area and what services parents were looking for that. I learnt that's there's loads of minders in my area but a need for more who would work later hours for shift workers and work with children with special needs etc.

They will tell you if their is much business in the area for u. Also have a browse on childcare.co.uk type in your postcode and see how much going rate seems to eb for childminders in your area. S you cold work out how much you could charge.

Hope that helps

[bunyip]

Remember that what people say and what they do are two very different matters.

I asked around when I was considering registration. There were dozens of parents who responded, "ooh, yes - we're desperate for CMs round here."

NB. This does not mean they have any intention of committing to using a CM on a regular, financially-viable basis (if at all.)

For the first year, I got by on an EY toddler 4 days a week; an EY child 2 afternoons per week TTO for 2 terms; then when the latter left, I added a schoolie 2 days a week TTO. On top of that, I had a lot of ad hoc and cover for other CMs - but nothing reliable. No way could I have lived on the money, and I am thankful this is a 2nd income to Mrs B's steady job.

Even now, all 4 CMs in my village are at the same time turning away enquiries and yet not making a lot either. The reason is that so many clients are part-time workers, wanting a day here or 2 mornings there, or total flexibility about whether their child needs collecting or not. From September I'm full on Tuesdays, but have 1 hour's work each Wednesday. In fact, I know a few people locally who looked at registering and decided there isn't enough work to make it worthwhile.

So, on the one hand, we have parents crying out for CMs and on the other, not enough regular work to make it worth a new minder setting up in business.

I'm just saying this cos I think market research might hide this sort of fact. Think very carefully what questions to ask and be very wary of the results you get. It's similar to the surveys that show everyone says they wants more local shops, whilst 99% of those surveyed drive off to a superstore and lets whatever local shops they do have go out of business.

[loocyloo]

Remember that what people say and what they do are two very different matters.

I asked around when I was considering registration. There were dozens of parents who responded, "ooh, yes - we're desperate for CMs round here."

NB. This does not mean they have any intention of committing to using a CM on a regular, financially-viable basis (if at all.)

For the first year, I got by on an EY toddler 4 days a week; an EY child 2 afternoons per week TTO for 2 terms; then when the latter left, I added a schoolie 2 days a week TTO. On top of that, I had a lot of ad hoc and cover for other CMs - but nothing reliable. No way could I have lived on the money, and I am thankful this is a 2nd income to Mrs B's steady job.

Even now, all 4 CMs in my village are at the same time turning away enquiries and yet not making a lot either. The reason is that so many clients are part-time workers, wanting a day here or 2 mornings there, or total flexibility about whether their child needs collecting or not. From September I'm full on Tuesdays, but have 1 hour's work each Wednesday. In fact, I know a few people locally who looked at registering and decided there isn't enough work to make it worthwhile.

So, on the one hand, we have parents crying out for CMs and on the other, not enough regular work to make it worth a new minder setting up in business.

I'm just saying this cos I think market research might hide this sort of fact. Think very carefully what questions to ask and be very wary of the results you get. It's similar to the surveys that show everyone says they wants more local shops, whilst 99% of those surveyed drive off to a superstore and lets whatever local shops they do have go out of business.

i agree, i'm always told that people are desperate for CM in my area, and we are all full ( ish ) but there is not the demand for another CM to work full time. we have a new afterschool club and that will absorb the random afterschool hours and as they also will take nursery children, so that will be interesting to see what happens.