Quality First covers ten standards. They include managing children's behaviour; promoting children's learning and development; working in partnership with parents; having good business practices and seeking support.
'Some partnerships specifically want everyone to do their own generic scheme, but this can involve twisting and turning the scheme for childminders,' says Sue Griffin. 'Others are sufficiently adaptable. Some schemes are designed for a lot of mentoring at the setting, which is not feasible when you think of the thousands of childminders. We tried to design an accessible and realistic scheme. The mentor is available on the telephone, and peer support groups are emerging.
Kim Hope, from East Horsley, Surrey, was one of the first childminders to complete Quality First this summer. She trained as a nursery nurse and became a childminder 12 years ago.
She received funding from her EYDCP, which also organised a workshop for childminders doing the course. She says, 'The partnership has since done another on portfolio building, and people buddied up with others in their area so they had someone to get together with and talk things through.
'It was not an awful lot of work. All the children I look after have a sleep in the afternoon, so I could do a little bit then, but mostly I tended to do it on a Sunday. I had a lot of the documentation in place because I had already done an NVQ and the Effective Early Learning project, which involved a lot of observations.
'It took about six weeks to do and I put in about four to five hours a week - I think other people might take longer. I did it on the computer so I could change bits round easily.
'I had done a lot of gathering of evidence for my NVQ and had the paperwork in place for Ofsted. If you have got all the policies there you don't need to do things again. Some childminders in the local network say "I have a portfolio for this and a portfolio for that" and I say "Why? You are a business, surely you haven't got time to do all this. You only need one portfolio with everything in it."
'I did have to look at a confidentiality partnership with parents. I had to ask the parents what they thought about my policies, as the children I look after have been with me a while and I couldn't remember the parents'
reaction when I had first shown them my policies. I also had to ask them what they thought about my equal opportunities policy.
'It is ongoing. You really think about what you do. At the end of each standard there is a section where you explain how it has helped you develop practice; in what ways; what your strengths are; and what you want to work on, whether by reading, training or attending a workshop, and when you plan to do that.'