This information has been provided by a member of the Independent Childminders Facebook group who was invited to an early years focus group with two government employees during the summer and given the opportunity to pass her questions and concerns to the team leader of the childminder agency project.

She says - today I had a telephone conversation with him and wanted to let you know the outcome. I hope you find is useful...

Hi, Just to let you know I had a telephone conversation with David, the Childminder Agency Project Team Leader today. I can report he is a very nice man but as expected could give little or no real answers to my questions.

Below I have listed some of the key points discussed;

Presently there are no agencies up and running as they were only able to apply from September so they are currently in the process of being assessed by Ofsted. However I did get the impression there weren't many in the pipeline (I recall the term 'slow burner' being used). Interestingly the framework for inspection isn't yet in place which means Ofsted can't yet inspect them, but they are hoping this will be in place by the end of the year!!! He was able to see the irony of this but blamed the need to pass things through the House etc.

If a childminder joins an agency they give up their individual registration status and will be inspected by the agency who will in turn be inspected by Ofsted (when the framework has been written up!). Ofsted will inspect a selection of childminders within the agency, as expected. If a childminder wants to leave the agency and become independent they will have to go through the process of registration again (and pay for that themselves) which potentially means DBS check, medical and training - although he couldn't say for definite as it may be that Ofsted could over rule this. However it does leave childminders facing substantial costs to re-gain their independence if they aren't happy with the agency. He couldn't see that this was a way to 'trap' childminders in a system they didn't want to be a part of, we agreed to disagree about the term 'trapped'!

He couldn't say how much training and support independent childminders would receive but admitted it would probably be less than present.

There is no limit to how many childminders each agency can take on. This will be monitored by Ofsted, but potentially an agency could take on unlimited numbers.

I asked about the implication of being employed by the agency (inferred in the Liz Truss letter) and this is obviously a strong possibility. He spoke in some detail about the security of being employed, having NI paid for etc. I pointed out that childminders are self-employed and this wouldn't work. I feel it is a strong possibility that this is the real intention of agencies as I don't really see any other way for them to make any money unless they encourage childminders to become employed, pay them the minimum wage and take the lions share of the money for themselves.

I asked many other questions that he couldn't really answer - I got the usual 'it depends on each individual agency' response. I made it quite clear that this answer caused great concern within the childminder community as it seems to be the standard response to brush us off, which in turns leads us to distrust those being questioned and the hidden agenda behind agencies.

I asked whether he thought it would ever be compulsory to join agencies and he couldn't answer, but didn't rule it out. I made it quite clear that if that ever happened they would face a revolution!

So that's pretty much as far as I've got. The conversation lasted over an hour but as I've already said he couldn't really answer many of my questions - which I pointed out was worrying in itself!

There will be no press release about how agencies are going. Their numbers and eventual inspection reports will be available on the Ofsted website, which they hope will eventually have its own tab when someone searches childcare provisions!

So I suppose we need to see what sort of uptake agencies have. They are obviously hoping new childminders will use them as a one stop shop solution as they make support and training more difficult to access elsewhere. So that's all I have to report.