Some of our online payments including garden waste and licensing will be unavailable from 2pm Thursday 28 March until midday Tuesday 2 April due to essential maintenance.

We offer business support to childcare providers and recruitment advice to those wishing to work in childcare, play and early education.

Our aim is to make sure that a diverse, capable workforce is developed across the childcare sector.

You can contact us using the details on this page if you have any queries.

Work opportunities in the childcare sector

You can download our vacancy bulletin which has details of vacancies in the childcare sector.

Becoming a childminder

If you would like to work family-friendly hours with children in your own home you may have thought about becoming a childminder.

You can request a copy of our free booklet of pre-registration information for prospective childminders by emailing earlyyears@southglos.gov.uk.

This has all the information to help you decide if childminding is for you. It also shows how you can register with Ofsted the regulator of childcare and education providers.

It also has details of how to book introductory training.

We offer an introductory course for child-minding. This course has four parts with some online learning through our Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) so access to the internet is essential to complete this course.

The topics include:

  • safeguarding and child protection
  • working in partnership with families
  • observations, assessment and planning
  • business and registration

Training

You can find details of the training courses we provide in our training and support handbooks.

These include:

Training for the Private, Voluntary & Independent Sector 2022-23

Training for Childminders 2022-23

Training for Nursery & Reception Classes 2022-23

You can book a place on the learning and development services website.

Educational resources

Our online resource centre has a huge range of free resources for early years settings, childminders and schools in South Gloucestershire.

A library of e-learning courses is available to browse such as, bilingualism, creating patterns in play, infection control and sand and water play.

Contact earlyyears@southglos.gov.uk to request access to the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE).

We will email you a unique username and password so that you can access the VLE securely.

We will send you an agreement form that must be signed by the manager of your setting and returned to us before you can use the VLE.

Once logged in you can find guidance on making the most of the VLE under the courses button.

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