Existing childminder?

At tiney, your independence as a business is very important to us. Whenever you join an agency you’ll remain self-employed, with plenty of autonomy around how you work. For example, you’ll continue to make key decisions around your hours, rate and trading name, but upon joining tiney you’ll unlock a new layer of business support and tools. For many existing childminders, this desire for more help on how to run their business is the specific reason they join an agency and switch from Ofsted. Whether that’s driven by a desire for simplified paperwork, more support on payments, or help with higher quality CPD, you’ll hear from many existing childminders who’ve switched to tiney that working as part of a CMA has enabled, not restricted, the way they run their business.

In summary, we’re confident that when you take a look at what we offer you’ll see that all of tiney’s services are additive to how you already work. As a modern CMA we’re here to make running your business easier, enabling you to solve all the business headaches you’ve been tackling alone up to now.

No! In fact, childminders are better off with tiney, and here’s why. At tiney your membership fee is calculated through a revenue-sharing model, meaning we charge a small fixed percentage on the childcare you deliver. This model works because it means that we only earn if you are earning and can all be focused on the same goal - to make sure that when you’re with tiney you earn more, not less. We do this in three ways - first, we reduce all your costly admin time making sure that you aren’t losing hours of billable time each week and can decide when and how you want to work. Second, we enable you to charge a fairer rate by improving the customer experience families receive via the tiney app and helping you more confidently market your setting under the tiney brand. Third, we reduce your expenses by including things like insurances, tax services and big discounts on other business costs. All of this combined means that your membership fee to tiney is offset by the benefits we offer. This is proven in our numbers - where, even after paying our typical membership fee, our childminders currently earn 17% more on average than equivalent Ofsted childminders nationwide. Plus, to top it all off, the tiney fee is even a qualifying expense on your end of year tax return.

Absolutely! tiney is a mission driven company and at the heart are our childminders and the children they care for. We believe that every child should have access to an amazing early years education, which is why ‘Unlock the potential of every child’ is our founding value. This is one of the reasons why we have a higher quality bar than Ofsted and why only 1 in 5 applicants will succeed in becoming a childminder with us. tiney is also a Business with a deep rooted social purpose. As part of our commitment to social impact we have pledged to play our part in meeting the 2030 Global Goals initiative around Quality Education set by World Leaders. We are also proud to be part of the Meaningful Business Network.

We know that many childminders registering with Ofsted find their business journey can feel lonely after registration. However, for those that join tiney, the months and years after registration are where the support really begins. tiney is a tight knit professional community where our team, tech tools, and other childminders, will ensure you feel part of something bigger. We use our unique app to support you with your business, we host regular webinars with experts, we organise regular in-person events and we are always on hand if you need to send us a message. Our community is so important to us - evidenced by the fact that 99% of childminder’s that have joined tiney over the last 3 years are still working with us and 9/10 would recommend us.

Being registered with tiney is certainly better, simpler and more satisfying than being registered with Ofsted. With tiney you’ll have more frequent interactions with our friendly team - including supportive yearly inspection visits and regular online coaching and training. We’d never describe the job of childminding as ‘easy’, and in all the ways that matter we’ve made sure that quality and safety remain paramount when joining tiney. We take the safeguarding of children and their quality of care extremely seriously, and in some cases, our checks and processes are deliberately stricter than that of Ofsted to maintain our high quality bar. All of this means that whilst being more stringent in certain ways, we can guarantee that working with tiney will always feel more supportive and energising than going it alone.

tiney’s glowing Ofsted inspection report is evidence to families that by choosing tiney, you are part of a modern CMA where high quality practice and passionate Early Education is at the heart. Our childminders are held to equivalent, or more stringent, standards than Ofsted and, as a CMA, Ofsted also acts as our regulator. At tiney, we also pride ourselves on having some of the best childminders out there - with only 1 in 5 of our applicants making it through to registration. Throughout your time with us you will receive top quality training and, once registered, access to further training that ensures continued professional development.

Increasingly the tiney brand is being recognised amongst families who are seeking out high quality, regulated care where childminders are inspected more frequently than their Ofsted counterparts. Families benefit from the tiney app which gives them a professional customer experience and easy way to pay. On top of this, tiney childcare is often more affordable than equivalent local nurseries, with many added benefits - including Online GP services for parents and easier ways to pay, including on funded hours. This means that parents get both a high quality experience and a good value price. All of this shows in the parent satisfaction scores our childminders receive: with 98% of parents rating tiney 5 stars in the tiney app.

Yes, you will still be able to accept funded places, childcare vouchers and other government schemes because we are an Ofsted registered childminder agency. We also work closely with many Local Authorities to help process funded hours payments and are actively working on even more features inline with the current funded hours expansion. Plus, our payments team are always on hand to help you navigate this more complex area of childminding.