Accredited Childminders
An area can start a network, in our case (Leek and Moorlands) a network coordinator is employed, to assess and recruit childminders to the 'Children Come First Network'. She is employed around two days a week. She goes through something from NCMA called the "Children Come First" tool kit and assesses whether each childminder is working towards or already achieves high enough standards of care and education for admission to the network.
Once the network has been up and running for a while, the co-ordinator can apply to be 'accredited', this means that NCMA check out the network and come to see if the network as a whole is good enough to be called 'accredited'. Although the assessor visits a couple of childminders as part of this process, she isn't specifically looking at their care for assessment, more that she is checking the co-ordinator's ability to assess the childminders herself, and that she is only admitting childminders to the network who are capable of meeting the higher standards required. She is also looking at the co-ordinators work in promoting the network and her management of it. If everything is all right the network can call itself 'accredited', and the minders can advertise their membership as such. For most childminders they are already exceeding the required standards, hence when Ofsted turn up and hear you are a member of a network, the whole inspection process should speed up somewhat, as she knows I am already receiving six to eight-weekly inspections and spot checks from the coordinator, who expects higher standards than Ofsted does.
If a childminder wants to be accredited in her own right (as I am ), then that is for NEG (nursery education grant) funding, to provide pre-school education to three year olds to rising fives, who could be in nursery or pre-school but for whatever reason parents choose to keep them with the childminder.
The nursery education grant funds two and a half hours per day/session of pre-school education for five sessions. But to provide that and get funding for it, the childminder is assessed and accredited in her own right. This usually involves good knowledge of areas of development, ability to plan activities, provide wide range of activities, continually assess child's stage of development etc. It is really useful in areas with limited pre-school provision, or in rural areas, because it gives children the pre-school education they perhaps would not have had. It also gives working parents more choice as they may not be able to put a child in pre-school or nursery because of the short hours, this way they get a small subsidy to their last couple of years of childcare costs instead of loosing out completely. For childminders who do not want to loose their children at three plus to nursery, it gives them something else to offer; the ultimate wrap-around care, particularly if the child will be remaining with the minder beyond five years old
