What's inside the Book?
Section 4. Working in Partnership
As a childminder you will be working in partnership with parents and often other professionals too. Section 4 will help you build successful working relationships and also provides advice for when you encounter problems.
Contents
- Balancing Professional and Personal Relationships
- Supporting Parents
- Parental Feelings of Guilt
- Working with New Mums and Dads
- Working with Young Mums and Dads
- Communication
- Confidentiality
- Understanding Parent's Feelings
- Assertiveness
- Responding to Requests
- Dealing with Criticism
- Causes of Conflicts and Grievances
- Resolving Common Conflicts
- Inappropriate Behaviour from Parents
- Working with Other Professionals
- Backup Childminders
- Employing Childminding Assistants
A few quotes from this chapter:
Information Exchange
In a childminding setting effective exchange of information between parent and childminder is the key to working in partnership. Mutual exchanging of information should occur at your preliminary meetings prior to a child starting and will continue throughout their contracted period. Information can be verbal, in which case you should allow time for parents to write down information, or you may have written information to give them. A mix of these is often the best solution.
Responding to Parents Requests
If parents make requests outside the normal contract, such as asking you to take a child on a different day to usual or collecting a child from a club, you do not have to automatically accommodate them. You should consider your own needs and the needs of other children first. Do you have time? Will it make extra work for you? Do you want to? Use assertive language such as "Collecting Millie from hockey will make dinner late for the other children, I don't feel that it would be fair on them."
If you find yourself regretting things you agree to on the spur of the moment then in future offer to call back later, when you have checked your calendar or diary, with the answer.
Interviewing Childminding Assistants
When interviewing someone for the role of childminding assistant, you will find yourself looking for many of the qualities a parent will look for in a childminder. You should choose someone with similar policies on behaviour and childcare to your own, someone you feel will be reliable and that you can build a good working relationship with, they must interact well with children and have good communication skills for dealing with parents and other adults.
You should discuss with them their previous experience, the age of children they have cared for and in what settings. You may like to ask them about qualifications they have and whether they are willing to take part in training courses in the future. To find out whether your working practices are similar you may like to ask them how they would deal with a particular situation, for example, two children arguing or an angry parent.
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