My introduction to working with social services as a registered child minder, was simply a case of being at the right time and place!

I was at a toddler group with my own youngest son, Adam, when I got chatting to one of the other mums she had a daughter, who was the same age as Adam but a lot smaller.

We got on so well that we swapped numbers.

The next day I had a call from this woman, I’ll call her Lyn. She asked if I was registered as a child minder, because social services were looking for a child minder to look after her daughter, Julie as some respite for her. She said that she had given my name to her social worker (it’s just as well that I am registered was my first thought!).

The following week I had a call from Julie’s social worker confirming that they were looking for a child minder.

We arranged to all get together.

At this get together I learned that Julie had some quite complex medical issues that had been initially looked into at Great Ormond Street children’s hospital.

Julie had a line going into her stomach through which she was sometimes fed a liquid diet.

It was agreed that I would look after the little girl 3 days a week and that social services were going to fund it as respite for Julie’s family.

It was also arranged that I give the child a small lunch.

I asked about the line going into her stomach and was told that should it come out I would need to contact Lyn immediatly as it was essential for Julie to get medical assisstance as soon as possible, Lyn actually gave me a letter of consent to give to the accident &emergency staff should I not be able to get in contact with her.

At first I was paranoid about the line coming out of Julie’s stomach and kept asking her to lift her t-shirt to show me. But as time went by I became more relaxed about it; as in spite of the girl doing somersaults on my playroom floor the line stayed firmly in place!

I wrote out a contract and we all had a copy (my contracts were tribulate meaning that there was a copy for everyone; this is also an advantage if estranged parents both require a copy.

Lyn had suggested that I give Julie soup for her lunch, so I shared a tin of vegetable soup between her and Adam hoping that she would follow Adam with using a spoon. It didn’t quite go as well as I hoped. Because Julie wasn’t used to using cutlery she decided to pick the vegetables out with her fingers and pop them in her mouth, Adam decided this looked fun too and soon both children were covered in vegetable soup.

I then decided to sit between them and spoon fed Julie.

I minded Julie for several months, until the family moved away; they did come to visit about a year later and Lyn told me that Julie still loved vegetable soup eaten with her fingers’

I had a few more children curtesy of social services; I had a call from the out-of-hours team asking me to collect a 6 year old boy from a local Primary school as nobody had come to collect him.

He was quite happy building a model from my Lego, until a social worker called to say that his parents had been tracked down so a social worker came to collect him, before leaving I took and printed off a photo of his model to take home with him

I received a request to mind a 9 month old baby boy ; his mum had been arrested and couldn’t be interviewed with a minor.

The baby was brought to me by a social worker and W.P,C. He also came with a baby bottle full of cocacola!

My last social services call was for a 4 month old baby whose very young mother and equally young father were moving from a children’s home into their oen property

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The poor girl looked terrified when she was brought to my house with her social worker. She handed her baby over with a bag containing 8 formula filled baby bottles( I was only booked for 6 hours!).

I met this lovely young family several years later in the park and the mother hugged me saying thank you for looking aftter their baby.

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I had a call asking if I would look after a 9 month old baby whose mother had been arrested and couldn’t be interviewed with a minor present.

The child was brought to me by a social worker and W.P.C. who handed a baby bottle full of cokacola along with the poor child.

My final child from social services was to care for a 4 month old baby while her very young mother and equally young father were moving out of their foster home into their own property.

The poor mum looked terrified as she gave me her baby along with a bag containing 8 formula filled bottles (I was only minding her for 6 hours!).

I came across this young family in the park one day and the mother gave me a hug saying how grateful she was to me for looking after her daughter.

She also asked me if I could collect her now 5 year old from school and mind her for an hour each afternoon. As I had no vacancies I gave her the name and contact details of another local registered child minder I knew.

Because I was friends with this other child minder , we often went to soft play together with all the children; because we got to know each other’s minded children and they us. We used each other as our emergency back ups (we both had note books with the children’s contact details and the plan was to pass the book over with the children if we ever needed to). Thankfully neither of us were ever put into this situation. But our Ofsted inspectors were impressed with the back up plan that we had.

As always questions and comments are welcome.

Until next time.

Karen

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