Early Years Team - South Eastern Trust

Early Years Teams are specialist teams of social workers within Health and Social Care (HSC) Trusts who are responsible for the registration, inspection, monitoring and support of child minders and day care providers.

Registration and inspection system By law, Social Services must operate a registration and inspection system for the following types of childcare services :

• day nurseries
• playgroups
• out-of-school care
• child minders
• summer and holiday schemes creches

Some types of childcare do not require registration and inspection, these include;

nannies/au pairs,

services that cater for children over 12 years old,

services which run for less than 2 hours a day

or services which operate for less than 6 days per year.

For group daycare settings, such as day nurseries, playgroups and out-of-school care, social workers within Early Years Teams inspect premises at least annually.

They will check :

the suitability of the premises, ensuring that they are safe to be used as a facility to provide care to children the suitability of the persons providing care, ensuring that there is no known reason why they are not able to work with children that the standard of care offered is in keeping with that which is required by any registered facility the suitability of equipment

Childminders are also inspected annually.  

Before child minders are registered, the social worker will check that their homes are safe for young children. A number of checks, including criminal record checks, are carried out on the prospective child minder and any member of the household who is over ten

The most up-to- date list of registered Childcare providers is available on www.familysupportni.gov.uk - Search Childcare Services.

You can best check for childcare by choosing type of childcare (use Drop-down bar) then input your (full) postcode – indicate within 1/5/10 miles. You can filter results by (tick boxes) vacancies / experience of special needs/school pick-up etc to find childcare which best meets your needs .

To find out more about the registration process, for further guidance in relation to application forms or other information please contact your local Early Years office Central Number for South Eastern Trust Early Years 028 4451 3807