Childminders and childminder assistants play a vital role in childcare. At the end of 2025 there were nearly 25,000 childminders in England, with the vast majority providing education and care for early years children. Of these, 41% have an assistant listed on their registration – including the current longest-serving childminder, who has been in the role since the 1970s!
As a childminder, employing an assistant can enable you to expand your provision, take on more children, and help create more government-funded early years places for children. In this blog, we explain the process of registering a childminder assistant.
Between April 2024 and March 2025, we made 1,533 assistants suitable – which means they were cleared to start work as a childminder assistant within the staff-to-child ratios.
Assistants must be deemed suitable by Ofsted before being counted in ratios or being left in sole care of children. Once approved, assistants can support childminders by caring for children, for example while the childminder does school pick-ups and drop offs or attends appointments. Childminders and assistants have distinct roles and childminders are responsible for the work of assistants.
We understand that assistants play a vital role in childcare and give childminders much-needed flexibility. We want to ensure that, when you do apply to register a childminder assistant, we are able to review and process your application quickly and fairly.
How registering a childminder assistant works
As a childminder you must let us know you want to work with an assistant.
The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) states:
All childminders must, as soon as reasonably practicable but in any event within 14 days of the change, notify either Ofsted or their childminder agency of any change to the persons aged 16 years or older living or working on any domestic premises from which childminding is provided.
You’ll be asked questions on the application form about your new assistant. Once you’ve completed your section and supplied contact details, we’ll email the person with an online application form and ask them to provide further information. With this information we can do a range of checks and determine if the person is suitable to care for or be in regular contact with children.
The checks we carry out
Everyone applying to be a childminder assistant needs to have an enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) certificate with children’s barred list check for the child workforce (this must also be home-based if the assistant lives on the childcare premises).
We will review information we receive from the children’s services department in each local authority where the applicant has lived in the previous 5 years. The information we receive determines whether we carry out other checks.
For example, if the assistant has lived abroad in the past 5 years, we may need to see a certificate of good conduct and an overseas criminal records check from each country they lived in during that period.
If a person has lived within several local authorities in the past 5 years we will need to contact each local authority for information. This understandably takes a little more time.
We may also request that assistants complete a health declaration form if the information we receive suggests that a health condition may impact their suitability to care for children.
How long it takes
Where we determine that someone is suitable to become a childminder assistant, it takes on average 34 working days. This is down from 37 working days in 2023, and we’re still finding ways to make the process better and faster. Of course this is an average, and some applications will be completed more quickly while others require additional time. This is largely dependent on the number of checks we are required to carry out.
Sometimes we need more information to help us reach a decision on suitability. This may include speaking with the childminder and/or assistant. As a result, this part of the process can take a little longer.
The length of time it takes to review an application does not necessarily mean we need to explore information in more detail or that we are concerned. It could be because we are waiting for information from other agencies.
In some cases, we do determine that a person is not suitable to be a childminder assistant. This happens rarely, and is always with the aim of keeping children safe.
Find out more
In November 2024, the Department for Education introduced changes to provide childminders and childcare providers with additional flexibilities to help more people work together, including on non-domestic premises. You can read our blog post about it.
If you want to work with more than 4 other people (5 in total) who are providing or assisting with childcare in someone’s home, you must register as a ‘childcare on domestic premises’ provider. You can read more about this in our guidance.
Assistants play a key role working alongside childminders to ensure all children in their care get the best start in life. Ofsted is committed to ensuring that everyone working with children is suitable, and we will continue to work with other agencies to make these decisions as safely and swiftly as possible.
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