Apple Tr's Reviews

Excellent, reliable and caring

We would like to wholeheartedly recommend Clare.

Our 34 months old daughter has been in Clare's care since June 2019 for two days a week. Having an
unfortunate experience with childcare prior to finding Clare we were extremely impressed with her knowledge, understanding of our daughter's needs, organisational skills and felt instantly comfortable with the settings.

Our daughter has settled easily and has a very strong attachment to her.

It is evident that the environment that Clare has developed has significantly contributed to our daughter's
development. There is daily structure that she can rely on, rhyme time, one-to-one book reading time, singing and dancing, garden play, practising alphabet and numbers and going to feed ducks.

Clare has also helped us with potty training.

Clare is exceptionally reliable, not to mention flexible whenever we need. We also believe that she has the right balance of well organised and incredibly caring. She sends us daily detailed updates, photos and videos and always makes sure that if our daughter does something new that we know it straight away.

During the Covid-19 pandemic Clare was exceptionally forthcoming and supportive and being key workers we really
needed that support. She adjusted the environment accordingly to fit the highest possible health and safety criteria while in such a situation and continued to care for our daughter during this time.

Our daughter is now ready to take her next step in her development and will be therefore leaving Clare soon. However I cannot stress enough how important Clare’s influence on her has been and how quickly our daughter has developed as a result of that.

We will be forever grateful to Clare for the time our daughter has spent with her and recommend her wholeheartedly.

I know that we will all miss her very much.

Lenka & David

• Overall
• Setting
• Cleanliness
• Food
• Communication

by LenkaV on 04/08/2020

Lovely, thoughtful and sincere :)

We are writing in regard to Clare Welham and her daughter, Kayleigh, whom we believe are the best choice to be your child’s new childminders. Our 14 month old son, Younes, has been under their care since February 2020 for 3 days a week. We instantly felt comfortable and in peace when we met Clare and Kayleigh for the first time. They are warm and kind people, who are well-versed in child development, both due to their educational qualifications as well as their natural affinity towards children.

They have a beautiful large home and garden with many facilities and areas to play, with a wide-variety of toys for children of all ages. They provide daily structure and routine, with different daily activities, such as rhyme time with musical instruments, book reading, sensory play, and feeding ducks.

They do much more than merely supervise Younes. They devote their full attention to each child and give them what he or she individually needs. Younes initially struggled with eating solids, and Clare was kind enough to make suggestions and give us ideas of how we could improve this. She also supports and encourages him in terms of his development, such as practicing walking, and teaching him animal noises to his amusement. He is learning something new every day!

Our favourite part of the day is receiving pictures of our son. We absolutely love the detailed daily Whatsapp texts about how Younes’ day is, the activities he enjoys, when and how long he slept and whether he ate his lunch/dinner well.

The qualities that we like about Clare, is that she is very thoughtful and caring. Two weeks ago she saw Younes standing and it looked like he was about to take a step. She rushed for her phone to record it as she didn’t want us to miss his first steps. She also bought Younes a gift and a card on his birthday!

Clare is also very honest and clear, and we appreciate that she kept us up to date during the Covid-19 pandemic in terms of the new childcare regulations and government guidelines, as it helped us to know what we could expect. Clare knows how to structure time well, but she is also flexible. I was very pleased that she was flexible around my work commitments, as a key worker, to remain open for Younes during these very unusual and uncertain times.

All in all, Clare’s approach to caring for our child complements our parenting well, but she also respects our personal views. We have seen great developmental progress in Younes and it would be our sincere pleasure to recommend her.

Mohamed & Nassira

• Overall
• Setting
• Cleanliness
• Communication

by Nassira on 28/07/2020

Lovely Caring Childminder

My Son George has been with Clare since I returned to work in January 2014. For the first 3 months he was doing 2 days a week with Clare and then my parents were able to have him for a day so she has been having him one day a week. George is clearly very fond of Clare often referring to her when he hasn’t been with her for the day or over a week due to holiday. He has come on leaps and bounds under her care. He is quite a sensitive child and she has been very mindful of this giving him lots of time and attention especially so in the early days when he was settling in. He has always slept and settled well for sleep with her which is a sign that he is a very happy little boy when he is with her.

I have, since the moment I met Clare, felt she was the right child minder for our son and have always felt confident leaving him in her care. She has prepared him well for nursery which I think he is now ready for. It is only due to a job and house move that George is having to leave her lovely care.

• Overall

by Parent on 29/10/2014