I have seen that several new registered child minders have been reaching out on social media for help with writing a contract for parents.

Hopefully this will help.

As registered child minders are as professional and qualified as nurseries and other forms of day care , it is important to have a legally bonding contract with parents, ( a parent once told me that one of the reasons she had chosen me to look after her children was because I came across as very professional when I presented her with my contract!) the contents should be discussed with potential new child minding families at the first interview.

The contracts that I used were purchased from my local child minding association (D.M.C.A), there are several other places were they can be obtained for example Pacey and the National Child minding association ( NCMA )even Amazon)or you can make your own.

Mine consisted of my name , address, contact numbers and Ofsted registration number. The child’s parents name and address and contact numbers plus the child’s full name and address and date of birth.

I also asked for 2 people I could contact , in an emergency if I couldn’t get hold of the parents ( usually grand parents or a close family friend).

Then I clearly wrote in the contracted days and hours that were agreed.

It is important to add in things such as how payment will work if the child or child minder is unwell ( I still asked for the full fee if the child was unwell, but I didn’t charge if I was sick as this would mean that parents may have to find the money to pay for alternative arrangements.

Next write about payments for holidays( child’s and child minders) and bank holidays more on that here

I never charged for my own holidays as I wasn’t available and parents may have to pay for alternative cover.

I charged half fee if I was given at least 2 weeks notice of a child’s holiday and full fee for less notice.

I have noticed more recently that some child minders are taking a few weeks paid holiday, but I’m not 100% sure how this works: Perhaps someone could explain it to me by leaving a comment.

On my contracts I added in how any outings were going to be paid for. I charged parents for these and nobody ever objected.

I was a member of my local child minding network and we were advised by them to write including the school run after the outings approval ) because a parent had objected to a child minder in the network taking his child on the school run saying that it wasn’t an outing!

I also asked for permission from parents to take their child out in my car and permission to take photographs

I also added in a request for a spare set of clothes to be put in each child’s bag and a 10%fine if the parents were late with their payments.

My contracts were triplet meaning that there was a copy for myself, one for each parent if they were separated and I would photocopy another if there were anther agencies involved ( social workers. speak therapists etc)

I would love to hear how other practitioners complete their contracts please share in the comments at the end of this post

As always questions and comments are welcome.

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Until next time.

Karen

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