Children's centres

Lady holding childRegistered childminders are ideally placed to work closely with children's centres. They can benefit from the centre's facilities and staff support, and the centre will reach even more children. When childminding is integrated into children’s centres, local families can benefit from both home and centre-based childcare, depending on the needs of their children.

 

NCMA can help you integrate the work of childminders with your children’s centre.

 

Guidance from the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) says that "all centres must provide a universal range of services including support to childminders via a quality assured, coordinated network, but also to other childminders in the area, for example by providing shared training opportunities, loan of toys and equipment and by hosting drop-in sessions".

 

So, if childminders aren't yet an integral part of your centre, now's the time to start involvement.

 

Childminding networks

An effective way of working with childminders is through an approved childminding network, with the network coordinator becoming a full member of the centre’s team. The coordinator can contribute to decision-making about the care and support offered to children and parents using the centre, and government guidance suggests that network childminders should have access to centre facilities, such as toy libraries, meeting rooms, vacancy coordination schemes and training sessions.

 

If an NCMA Children Come First childminding network already exists in your centre’s catchment area, you may be able to integrate it into your centre’s services. The network coordinator can either recruit registered childminders in your catchment area to join the network and provide additional places or, if existing network members have vacancies, assign these for the centre’s use only.

 

Network childminders can also work towards early years accreditation (if not already accredited) to provide the centre with home-based early years education places as well as childcare places. This helps centres meet their requirement to provide 121/2 hours of free early years education for 3- and 4-year-olds.

 

If an NCMA Children Come First network does not yet exist in your centre’s catchment area, or those already there are being fully used, you can work with NCMA (through a service level agreement) to establish one. Contact your local NCMA office for more information or visit the Children Come First website at www.ncmaccf.org.uk (external link).