Children's centres
Registered 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).