Working with children

Families choose childminders because they want their child to benefit from the security of being in a small, loving and safe home from home environment. It is important that you have systems in place to ensure that children in your care are safe.

SCMA provide a number of learning opportunities to help you do this. More information can be found by visiting their website. These are some of the training topics which you could start to look out for and SCMA will be able to help you with these:

• Child Protection – your local authority will also be able to help you with this.

• First Aid

Remember that you must tell the Care Inspectorate about any accidents and incidents, allegations of abuse and outbreaks of infectious disease. There are other notifications which you should be aware of, but these are likely to be the most common. You make these notifications on e-forms. The portal is for changes to your registration, e.g. change of name.

You will be asked to complete an annual return each year. This gives the Care Inspectorate information about what is happening in all services each year to help us plan, inform and carry out our inspections and improvement work. Annual returns are completed in January and February each year.