Starting Your Own Childminding Business

There are now hundreds of thousands of children being cared for by childminders as more and more women with young children either wish or need to go back to work. Unsurprisingly therefore the demand for good quality, flexible childcare is high and childminding can provide a rewarding and lucrative career for those interested in caring for children and providing an important service for families.

Working from home can be either a dream job or an absolute nightmare depending entirely on how you approach it. The most important thing to remember is that creating the right image is crucial to any successful business, and childminding is no exception. The minute you start to think that working from home is an easy option is when your business will start to suffer. To be a good childminder you must be professional at all times and in order to do yourself and your business justice you need to:

• Ensure that you are always ready to greet the children and their parents in the morning. You need to be organised and prepared and, under no circumstances, must you ever open the door to your customers in your dressing gown because you have slept in!
• Think about the importance of making your customers, that is the children and their parents, welcome in your home. Listen to what they have to say and respect their values and opinions.
• Ensure that your home is clean and safe at all times.
• Be polite – there is no excuse for rudeness.
• Be punctual – if you have agreed to take children to and collect them from school then you must always allow yourself adequate time to do so. Children should never be late for school nor should they be loitering in the playground because you have not collected them on time.
• Be as helpful and flexible as possible.
• Keep accurate up to date records of all the children in your care.
• Ensure that parents are informed, well in advance, when you are going on holiday, changing your fees etc. so that they themselves can plan for these changes.
• Keep up to date with training.
• Act responsibly at all times.

By Allison Lee author of Starting Your Own Childminding Business.