Response from Amy W
Responded 8 Nov 2025

As a Childminder who has over 10 years experience and who has been awarded Outstanding on both of my Ofsted inspections, I have never been given a negative review before and will respond as follows:

It is incredibly difficult to work with parents who refuse to listen to advice or work with you, despite it being in the best interest of their child.

The child in question had extreme separation anxiety from mum, even when at home. Before starting, their previous au pair had left and they had taken on a new au pair who sorted breakfast for the child/dropped off/collected and sorted dinner. She had also been taken out of nursery and joined a new childcare setting here at Woodlands, so there was a lot of change going on for a young child. This child was used to having a lot of 1-2-1 attention and became very distressed if other children were shown affection or attention, which in turn was starting to affect other children in my care. All advice on how to try and deal with separation anxiety was ignored. When a child is extremely distressed and no amount of love and affection from their carer is working and it is affecting their well being as well as the other children in the setting, of course parents will be contacted to collect. I am a lone worker who looks after multiple children. I do not have an assistant and I am not a 1-2-1 nanny.

On initial visits, I make it very clear to parents that children must be able to self settle in a cot for nap times as I do not have the capacity to rock a child to sleep and hold them in my arms when I have other children sleeping upstairs. Parents had agreed they would work on this and they would start trying to settle her in a cot. It became very clear after the child started that she was not being put down to sleep. After speaking with parents, they admitted that she was still being rocked to sleep and often held for the entirety of her nap and at night would be rocked to sleep and transferred to a mattress, but would wake numerous times for comfort or to be cuddled back to sleep. Again, they agreed to work on independent sleeping, however the Au pair soon assured me that it wasn't happening and the child was sleeping in a buggy on a long walk or still being cuddled and held for the entirety of her naps. This was leading to every day at nap time becoming very unsettled with lots of distress from a very over tired/over stimulated child, who then affected everyone else's napping schedules and all the children's wellbeings were then being affected. After messaging parents again, they replied that they were refusing to sleep train or to stop cuddling the child and they would continue as they had been. We are very busy at Woodlands Childminding and most children should be able to independently sleep for at least an hour, usually 1.5 hours at 1 years old. This is 'normal.'

Promoting independence, even from a young age promotes confidence. From the age of 6 months, most children are able to independently eat finger foods. By the age of 1, they should be very confident eating a range of finger foods independently. Again, when this was bought up, it became clear the child was being fed by parents/au pair and didn't want to feed themselves. Again, as her childcare provider, I tried to work with her parents, but despite asking them to promote independent eating, this was clearly ignored. Obviously, no 1 year old is expected to be able to spoon feed themselves, but finger foods, most definitely.

I never take handing notice to a family lightly, but after months of what seemed like the parents of this particular child working against me instead of with me, and also needing to take into consideration the wellbeing not only of their child who was clearly very distressed at being away from mum, but also the other children in my setting who were all becoming increasingly unsettled, I had no choice.

I pride myself on providing a warm and loving home from home setting, where the children are all treated as they would be if they were mine. I have numerous references from old families and current families and these can be provided upon request.