Help us to help you...

[sarah707]

The Childminding Forum, Childcare.co.uk and the Independent Childminders Facebook group aim to support ALL childminders - those who want to join an agency and those who want to stay independent - through the changes that are coming.

The Childminding Forum and Childcare.co.uk have repeatedly stated they will NEVER become an agency - it's independence all the way and for those childminders who want to remain independent, we believe the way forward is to offer help and advice and to use our time to support you.

The Childminding Forum is lobbying on behalf of childminders in many different ways. For example, we are encouraging childminders to write to Government and make their feelings about ‘More Affordable Childcare’ known. There is a sample letter here -
http://www.childmindinghelp.co.uk/fo...care-plan.html.

A new section of the Forum has been opened for Independent Childminders to talk about issues that concern or worry them -
Independent Childminding Chat.

Alongside this, a new website has been developed which will be added to over time -
Independent Childminders - Supporting each other.

The Forum free resources section has been completely updated -
Free Childminding Resources.

And there are a lot of new free downloads to offer help and advice for all childminders -
Free Downloads.

More free documents are regularly added to the files section on the Independent Childminders Facebook group -
https://www.facebook.com/groups/inde...minders/files/.

And we encourage members to use the Forum Blog to air their thoughts and share their positive comments and any worries about the future -
Childminding Forum - Recent Blogs Posts - Blogs.

The Childminding Forum has also sponsored the writing of a letter to Ofsted to make our concerns heard about inspection outcomes and we encourage all childminders to use it as a template to write their own -
Childminder letter to Ofsted -.

Alongside this, members of the Forum and Facebook group have joined together to write a further letter for Ofsted to engage them in useful conversation to improve our inspection outcomes and make inspections a better and more valuable experience. We are delighted that PLA has agreed to hand the letter over to Ofsted on our behalf -
Taking childminder concerns to Ofsted.

Childcare.co.uk has also been adding documents to its files to support independent childminders and agency childminders alike. There are already over 100 EYFS and Childcare Register Information Guides available for gold members of Childcare.co.uk and this range is being extended at the moment to include pdf versions of essential paperwork for free members as well as Word versions for gold members.

I personally have written a number of articles for magazines including Nursery World and Home Childcarer arguing the case for independence and I have involved as many childminders as possible in continued discussion to raise and air issues which we can follow up.

I have also written to my MP, the Department for Education, the Lords and many others and shared childminder concerns. I have encouraged others to join with me and put templates of my letters on the Childminding Forum, the Facebook group and promoted them on my own page where appropriate -
https://www.facebook.com/KnutsfordChildminding.

These are just some of the ways we have committed ourselves to supporting independent childminders.

So... over to you! It is time to help us please! What more can we do to support YOU?!?

[shortstuff]

to all that are involved in the amazing list thank you very much, i cant think of anything else possible x

[hectors house]

Thank you for continuing to motivate us

[Mrs Scrubbit]

Thanks for all the brilliant support xx

[loocyloo]

I can't think of anything ...

except .... will you take over from Gove, Wilshaw & Truss please

thank you. you are amazing!

[jackie 7]

Is there anything else? Thanks so much.

[Loushah]

You have done such a fantastic job, thank you much.

[lilac_dragon]

Thank you yet again Sarah.
We all appreciate what you and the others are doing to help us.