Our mission is to ensure the childminding services offered under our name are of the highest quality through professional support and guidance. The first few years of a child’s life are potentially the most important in terms of development, whether this is physically, emotionally, socially or intellectually. This is the earliest opportunity to get it right. Children develop at a fast pace and the opportunities offered impact upon their development. EPPE research found children benefit greatly from high quality learning experiences. We aim to support childminders in offering high quality learning experiences through continual professional development, knowledge sharing, supportive challenge and by offering peer support. Historically childminders are not always at the forefront of a parent’s choice for childcare and early education. This shouldn’t be the case; childminders are more often an excellent choice in terms of an enabling and nurturing environment.

We are passionate about parents being their child’s first educator but acknowledge that childcare is essential in today’s modern world. To balance home learning and quality early education experiences we aim to deliver training that underpins parental engagement and support for home learning. In addition, we will offer training in home-based childcare which will be developed in conjunction with Wolverhampton University’s Faculty of Education.

We have over 20 years early years’ experience at a Local Authority level. The issues faced by parents, childcare providers and indeed the DfE in delivering high quality early education places are challenging. If we can balance out quality support, good parental engagement and information sharing and the offer of the highest quality training and opportunities then we can ensure children are in the best quality early education places.

The impact of this is maintained quality and all children will have the opportunity to achieve great things and to fulfil their potential and unlock talent.

We will work with parents to ensure they have access to high quality early education places and support them through good quality brokerage in identifying the right childminder for them. We will ensure parents of children attending childminding sessions are given information about; the provision on offer to their children, how their children are progressing in their learning and if they need any additional support, information on how well the childminder is judged within their inspections and what they will need to do to improve, how often the agency will monitor and assess the provision. Each childminder will be supported with inclusion, support with designing their Local Offer, spending early years pupil premium effectively, working in partnership with parents and carers and supporting home learning and the home learning environment. The 2 year integrated check forms a vital part of the healthy child programme and we will ensure this opportunity is used to its maximum potential through discussions and partnership working with parents and health visitors. This will ensure issues are identified early and referrals to other agencies are prompt and effective.