The email from my childminder came through on a Sunday night. It was nearly 8pm and I’d only just sat down after an hour of wrestling my two young sons into bed. February half term – and a week of no childcare – loomed and I remember feeling apprehensive about how we’d manage without the term-time support our wonderful childminder provided for us.
Then I checked my inbox. The email itself was kind but nonetheless devastating. With a heavy heart, and for personal reasons, our childminder had made the decision to close, forever, in a month. I bawled. For two hours. After which, exhausted and puffy-eyed, I retired to my bed, anxiety twisting in my gut.
We first heard of Abbie – who ran her childminding business for nearly two decades, ably supported by a selection of wonderful staff members – from a friend who also used her. “She’s brilliant,” this friend enthused over dinner one night. “You won’t find anyone better.”
We’d always assumed we’d find a nursery. Childminders, after all, are on the decline as people opt, instead, for larger settings or well-known franchises. The number of childminders in England fell to 25,000 in 2025, according to Ofsted figures, down from almost 48,000 in 2015. Experts have even warned that childminders could completely disappear by 2033.
In the end, we didn’t look elsewhere. Arriving at Abbie’s house, from which she ran her business, when my now four-year-old, Fabian, was still in utero, I didn’t know what to expect; poised on the precipice of parenthood, the concept of childcare was alien to me. I noted the fees were significantly lower than nurseries – £6.50 per hour for seven and a half hours a day (a total of £48.75) – but my abiding memory is looking around the setting, and feeling this was a safe space: the garden was expansive; the nap room calm; and Abbie herself a magical mix of kind, generous, and meticulously – almost unnervingly – efficient.
She had around five families in her care while we were there – a total of eight children, although not all at the same time: some did different days, others only required wraparound care before and after preschool. Sometimes my son would be there with just one other, getting almost undivided attention. I knew she’d take care of my son, but I also suspected she’d take care of me, too.
She did, of course. Just as she had with every family that had crossed her threshold, Abbie welcomed us into her home and treated our children (a second son, Inigo, arrived two and half years after Fabian) with a kind of familial love. When I collected Fabian after his first day, she told me, casually, that at naptime she’d rocked him to sleep in her own arms before placing him in his cot.
According to parenting specialist Kirsty Ketley, who started out as a childminder, childminders typically build strong relationships with the families they support. “They often provide continuity of care – one consistent carer – which helps build strong emotional bonds,” she says. “They offer a very home-from-home vibe, which many parents love.” Childcare association Corom Pacey, in England, says an individual childminder may care for a maximum of six children under the age of eight. Of these six, a maximum of three may be young children (a child is a young child until 1 September following their fifth birthday), and there should only be one child under the age of one. Exceptions can be made for wraparound care or care of siblings, if a childminder is able to demonstrate they can meet the children’s needs.
Ours certainly did. Abbie became so essential, so fundamental to our lives, that her name wormed its way into our family lexicon: we had Abbie days and non-Abbie days. And when I was planning who would look after Fabian while I gave birth to Inigo, I was very clear it had to be Abbie. Fortunately – be it by luck or, somehow, design – I went into labour on a Monday, an Abbie day, and that night, she messaged me to let me know she was thinking of me.
She taught them both to walk, to talk, to share, to play. She took care of the physically messy – helping toilet train Fabian – and the emotionally messy, watching over him closely in the days after my grandad – someone he adored – died. She comforted me when my mum was diagnosed with cancer.
All of which is to say that, of course, she minded my children. But, more than that, she minded our whole family. She was a member of our proverbial village, so utterly integral that when she announced she was closing forever, it wasn’t just the anxiety around what came next (nursery, it turns out, and fees five times more expensive) that had me sobbing into a pillow, but heartache at what we were losing.
The news felt like the breakdown of a relationship and, in the weeks that followed the email, I worked my way through the seven stages of grief, hovering, for some time, in denial, convinced she would email saying she’d made a mistake. In fact, this period felt so akin to a break-up, I found myself getting upset with friends and family who – quite reasonably – started sending me websites of other childcare settings. I wasn’t over Abbie; I didn’t want to think about anyone else. I couldn’t understand why this was happening.
Abbie’s reasons for closing were personal but, Ketley says, many other childminders are quitting the profession because of money: they are fundamentally undervalued. “Childminders are self-employed,” she says. “Low pay, rising costs, and so much admin, plus the government funding for parents doesn’t make the work financially or emotionally viable.”
It was a hard month of drop-offs as we awaited the final day. We collected messages from families she had supported over the years and collated them in a book, complete with photographs of children in her care. We made cakes and bought John Lewis vouchers and flowers. Nothing, really, seemed like enough.
On the last day, we knew we couldn’t say goodbye on the doorstep, as we always had, so, with her permission, we planned an afternoon picnic in the village, on the grassy hills she’d taught countless children to roll down, opposite the preschool Fabian now attends, the one she had dropped him off at and picked him up from for a year. We posted a message on the local Facebook group, too, wanting to give other families the chance to say goodbye. And they did, turning up with flowers, cakes, and words of thanks.
Unable to find another childminder quite like Abbie, we’re using a nursery now and, of course, it is fine, albeit staggeringly expensive at £86 a day, including over school holidays: we’ve had to adjust our hours to afford it. Inigo is settling and the staff are kind, enthusiastic, and committed to his care. Fabian attends wraparound care at his preschool which is brilliantly practical, but feels somewhat impersonal. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t long, wistfully, for my past relationship.
Good childminders, it is now clear to me, are the unsung heroes of a childcare system that, too often, feels transactional. What a shame it would be if they did disappear for good. I am, without a doubt, the mother I am today because of mine: she didn’t just change nappies, she changed lives.