Quick and Easy ways to find Local Childcare
*This is a paid partnership with childcare.co.uk*
We haven’t always had the best of luck when it came to choosing childcare for our 4 children. We had lots of nurseries change their requirements and as our family grew it became more of a challenge to juggle searching for the right childcare provider. As my youngest (now aged 3) begins school in September, I thought it would be helpful to reflect on our childcare journey and easy ways to find local childcare for our 4 children.
Childminders? Nannies or Nurseries?
Whether to use a childminder, nanny or nursery will always be a very individual decision for you and your child. We opted for nurseries for all of our children. I wanted a structured play and learning environment to help them prepare for school. As I’m a teacher, we only wanted a term time nursery so I could spend as much time with the children as I could in the holidays (plus it was cheaper!) There aren’t many childminders that offer this – so a nursery seemed the best fit. I also wanted a good outdoor play space and it seemed that nurseries offered this more.
Quick and easy way to find local childcare
We used childcare.co.uk when, unfortunately, the nursery we had used for my older two children became a preschool and couldn’t accommodate our third baby. We had less than 6 weeks to find a new childcare provider for 3 children! It was stressful to say the least. As we had very specific requirements such as term time only and an outdoor focused nursery. Childcare.co.uk is very simple and easy to use. You register, type in your postcode and then you can search for your requirements. You can also use childcare.co.uk to search for a local private tutor or after school club. What we loved is you can even filter the results such as if you are looking for full time, part-time or after school childcare.
Using Childcare.co.uk
Childcare.co.uk is a quick and easy way to find local childcare. Once you have your list, you can click on the individual profiles to find out more about childcare providers. You can click and easily find key information that can help you narrow down your choice. For example, you can click to see if they are OFSTED registered, if they have a full driving license, if they are a non-smoker, if they are DBS checked and if they have first aid training. You can check the childcare provider’s qualifications and relevant experience through the website too. It’s also really useful to have the distance from your house as you want to make everything as simple as possible when it comes to returning to work.
The best feature of the childcare.co.uk website is the reviews that they have from real parents who have used the childcare. This is so useful for parents, particularly those unused to choosing childcare with their first child. Reviews of childcare providers are the best information to help choose the best childcare for their family and something that is unique to childcare.co.uk.
There are also additional articles on the site which can help you further on your childcare journey, such as ones on how to choose the right childcare, how to interview potential nannies and how to set up a nanny contract – the site is a wealth of information on all the potential questions you might have about childcare.
Our own childcare journey?
Through childcare.co.uk we found a lovely nursery for our younger two that offered us the flexbility of both part time and term time care. We did have to change some of our requirements and in the end opted for a nursery that focused lots on daily outdoor trips but only had a small garden. It was the warmest, kindest and most play focused nursery out of the ones we found on childcare.co.uk – so it suited us! Changing the requirements to find the nursery that worked best for us was easy on the website – just by clicking and changing the requirements checklist – it saved me hours of trawling websites and phoning nurseries and childminders!
We hope you’ll also find the childcare.co.uk website easy to navigate and use and that you find the best possible childcare that your kids love like ours do!
