Child minders

Hey, I’m really struggling with searching for a childminder (childminder is my preference over nursery). One I looked at today felt very much like they were trying to be a nursery and they don’t go out and about and is about 15mins in the wrong direction for work. Another that I looked out earlier in the week was amazing, yet they require a £225 holding fee for each month until my son starts at the end of May. That’s 4.5 months of holding fee that they would expect. Is this normal? I knew some places expected a deposit but I didn’t think it would be a monthly payment up until he started! Any idea how to look for more options? We are relatively new to the area, have asked the neighbours and looked on childcare.co.uk. But we live In a rural area and I’m finding it difficult. I don’t want to look in the town where my office is based because i often work across the county, at home or at that office. I don’t want to travel all the way that way to drop babe off when i am wfh or in the opposite direction 🙈

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Our childminder asked for the first months fee up front this was in November and she doesn’t start until May. I think because they can’t take as many children on as nurseries that they want a holding fee so they don’t give the place away for you to cancel. It must be fairly standard procedure. We paid it because we reelly wanted to secure her place and it was an ideal minder for us

We are having to pay for one day a week until April when our boy starts with the childminder and we've had to pay a £200 deposit to hold the second day. They are much smaller than a nursery and wouldn't be able to financially cope just keeping a space open as they are restricted to how many children they can have. We get the 15hours childcare funding from April so it's only a couple of months of paying and we really wanted her as our sons childminder, a small price to pay I guess x

I totally understand a holding fee/ deposit and I expected this as they had told me there was a small deposit to pay before we visited, I just didn’t expect that we’d have to pay over 200 every month until he started 🤷🏼‍♀️ I will have to discuss with my husband as I will be going into my unpaid period of mat leave soon and we literally bought a house last week but I really loved her 😬

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