Review: Finding Trustworthy and Reliable Childcare With Childcare.co.uk

One of the big challenges of being a parent is finding childcare, even if you have family and friends around you it can be still be a struggle to find someone to look after your offspring. With school holidays, Christmas and New Years parties all fast approaching it can be a tricky time for parents, especially when some of the parties and events you want to attend might be attended by your family and friends. It can make you feel guilty asking your nearest and dearest to look after your children multiple times within a couple of days.

With the struggle of festive childcare on most parents' minds, i have partnered with Childcare.co.uk. For those of you not aware of the website, it is an award winning online social networking platform for parents, childcare providers and private tutors with over 1.8 million members. In this blog post i want to showcase how easy and reliable they are; from finding baby-sitters and household help, through to nannies and private mid-wives, making it the best destination to start your childcare search or childcare job search today.

To start your search for a babysitter or other childcare service, you need to register for an account for free. Once you have signed-up you will be prompted to create a profile and will ask for you to include your childcare requirements, your personal details and a profile picture. It is important that you provide as much detail as you can within this section as suitable childcare providers will get in touch with you via a message should they think they would be suitable based on your listed needs. Should you find a provider you like you can then go on to meet them our obtain more information.

Please remember that you should have an email sitting in your inbox, in which you will have to verify your account. Once you have your house in order you can begin to browse the site for any of the following in your area:

Childcare Jobs
Babysitter
Childminder
Nanny
Au Pair
Nursery
Private Mid-wife
Nursery Nurse
Maternity Tutor
Maternity Nurse
Private Tutor
Out of School Club
Household Help
Doula
Schools

When searching you can adjust your search within 5, 10, 15 and 20 miles of your location. You can also add in a filter to help you find the right provider quicker. Take a search for babysitters for example, you can filter by the following criteria:

Evening-Babysitter
Weekend Babysitter
Day-time Babysitter
Overnight Babysitters
Morning Babysitters
Hotel Babysitter
Afternoon Babysitters
24 Hour Babysitters
Emergency Babysitter
Babysitters with Childcare Qualifications
Babysitters with DBS Checks
Babysitters with First Aid Training
Babysitters with Own Car
Male Babysitters
Female Babysitters
Babysitters with Full Driving Licence
Babysitters with Special Needs Experience
Babysitters with Newborn Experience
Montessori Trained Babysitters

Once you have decided what type of babysitter you require you will be served a list of potential candidates. An overview of each babysitter is given and you then have a couple of options to review their profiles to find out more information, directly message them to ask any questions you might have and or like/review their services. Here are a couple of examples of babysitters in Harrogate:

If you click in to a profile then you are given a more comprehensive breakdown of all the following, in relation to each candidate:

Summary of offerings
About me
My experience
My Qualifications
My Availability
My Feeds
Support Documents
Reviews from other members

There is a lot of information on every profile and you can get a good understand and a feel for the person by the information they provide within each heading. My partner used Childcare.co.uk to find a babysitter for a wedding last year and she was able to find and communicate with a sitter close-by who was able to come to the wedding we attending in Harrogate, collect the boys and take them to our home and put them to bed - the babysitter happened to be a friend of a friend in the end, something we didn't know until after when my partner added her on Facebook.

We agreed that the babysitter would come and introduce herself to the boys twice before she looked after-them. She came around on the morning and took two car seats, the sitter was very accommodating to our needs throughout and even face-timed us before the boys went to bed.

They also have an parenting advice section in which they hand out top tips on everything from tantrums through to fussy eaters: parenting-guide

The website also gives you an insight into what it would be like to start a career in education, as you get to see how some of the best providers experience and how they position themselves . Eden Training Solutions are a training provider that specialise in Early Years Courses & Apprenticeships. We train people up to become Practitioners that can go on to work in or manage a nursery. If you want to find out more on how to become a Nursery Practitioner you can find more information out over at our page: Early Years Practitioner.

My Thoughts
From my experience i would highly recommend changing your email notifications settings when you sign-up as you can be inundated with alerts from people reviewing your profile. Feel free to negotiate on price, talk directly to the providers and have an open discussion around your needs, as not everyone will be suitable to your requirements + it is ok to change your mind, don't feel guilty about not liking a childcare provider!

I highly recommend Childcare.co.uk for any parent looking for childcare options now or in the future. It is free to use and there are loads of other people raving about it as well! It has a 5 star score on Trust Pilot, and some of your favourite parenting bloggers have also written their honest reviews here:

I recommend following them on Twitter to get their latest news and advice on all thing childcare:

https://t.co/HRYGWWynoh is the UK's largest online community of parents, childcare providers, private tutors and schools with over 1.7m members.

Join free today at https://t.co/tqHYQ5ERzl pic.twitter.com/vZ2LQ7jUtc
— Childcare.co.uk (@childcare) February 28, 2018

If you are looking for more information on how to find the right school-based childcare for your child, then TutorHunt has a handy guide on "Picking the right school for your child".

Disclosure: I was contacted by childcare.co.uk and asked to write an honest review, the words and opinions are my own.