Hello,

My son will be starting school in September 2015 (I know it's far off). Dalmain is our closest.

For the working parents on this forum, who have children at primary school - do you have child minders/nannies who pick your children up from school? And if so, how did you find them? Does each school have a list of child minders?

Many thanks,

M

Hi yes the school will most probably a list of childminders who do pick ups and Lewisham council will also have one, you can access details on-line. childcare.co.uk should be helpful too.

Thanks for the reply @milliemop, you never can plan too early.

Our experience was that most childminders will only know on short notice if they have places coming up. We were also trying to be early birds to find a childminder half a year ahead of when we need one but most childminders told us they have no idea whether they have spaces in half a years time.
The ones that did have spaces were the ones starting out from new. In the end we found someone through facebook so it's always worth checking out the local FB pages.

Thanks, @daveherne. It's invaluable to get advice from folk who have been in the same situation and thanks for the suggestion. I suspected it would be far too early to find someone.

Dave's right - though you can get a list of childminders who pick up from Dalmain from the school office. There are also two afterschool clubs (Rainbow and Acorn) that serve the school - which gives some more options.

Thanks @rmurraywest, I missed your reply, sorry!

Thank you one and all, this forum can be very helpful.

BTW we went to to Dalmain for an open day and really liked it, it had a good feeling about it. We're not getting our hopes up though as we know it's an over subscribed area for primary schools.

We're going to see St William of York soon, as well.

Also go onto Mumsnet, they have 'local' sections, and also childminder chat areas. Very often someone from se23 will be asking to share nanny/childminders.