Successful recruitment pilot creates new Glenkens childcare
A newly-registered childminder is up and running and set to welcome the first children into her business in the Glenkens thanks to an innovative campaign to recruit new childminders in rural areas.
Simone McDonald, who lives with her husband on a working farm in Dalry, applied to become a childminder after seeing an advert online, encouraged by the package of help available which offers one-to-one support, funding and training to help get started.
Simone was working shifts as an intensive care nurse on the children’s ward in Glasgow and had been thinking for a long time about switching career to childminding to enable her to spend time with her own children. After losing her mum to a terminal illness, she decided that she wanted to re-evaluate and finally make the jump to a new career, still working with children but which would provide her with much more flexibility.
Simone’s own children enjoying the outdoors.
“My own children are young (eight, five and three years old) and I was really fed up travelling long distances back and forward to work and feeling guilty about missing so much of their lives. They’re only this wee once! I wanted a new career with more flexibility, but which still enabled me to work with children. I’d always thought about childminding, and spurred on by the advert and the support I could see was available, I decided to apply.
I’ve been so appreciative of the one-to-one support I received from the Scottish Childminding Association in helping to guide me through from the start of the journey to now being able to say I’m a newly-registered childminder in the Glenkens.”
Simone recently put a post on social media to say that she is now a registered as a childminder with the Care Inspectorate and open for business and was inundated with over 40 enquiries from parents, some from over 30 miles away.
The demand for Simone’s service further underlines the crucial need for childminders in rural areas such as the Glenkens.
Offering flexible childcare five days per week, Simone wants Little Farm Childminding to provide a nurturing, home-from-home childcare environment. With a large garden, vegetable beds, an orchard, farm animals and lots of wildlife on the doorstep, her setting will also naturally very much focus on rural life experiences, with many unique outdoor learning and play opportunities for her new ‘mindees’.
Led by the Scottish Childminding Association, this innovative pilot scheme was funded for the Glenkens area by Scottish Government and Glenkens & District Community Fund.
Graeme McAlister, chief executive of the Scottish Childminding Association, said:
“The opening of Simone’s new childminding setting in the Glenkens is a real success story and a great example of the ways in which this unique pilot is helping to provide high-quality, flexible childcare for families that need it to enable them to live and work in rural areas."
For anyone interested in a career in professional childminding in the Glenkens visit www.childminding.org/childminder-recruitment for further information.