By using tiney, families can find safe, trusted and high quality early years childcare in their neighbourhood that perfectly matches their needs. Every tiney home meets standards that are more comprehensive than those set by Ofsted and embraces the tiney philosophy of home-based, play-centred, family-style care.
These Parent Terms of Use set out your rights and responsibilities as a parent or legal guardian to ensure the best possible experience for you and for the childminders who engage you.
In these Parent Terms of Use we may use capitalised words and phrases. When we do, these have the meanings given in our General Terms of Use, which apply to our contract with you in combination with these Parent Terms of Use.
1. How It Works
At tiney we support a community of Parents and childcare Childminders, matching Parents with carefully-selected Childminders and, through our various Services, providing the tools and infrastructure to simplify contracting, billing, messaging and the other day-to-day aspects of engagement between Parents and Childminders. However, the contract for childcare services is between you and the Childminder – we are not part of that transaction, although we may facilitate it. The contract between you and the Childminder will be made on a standard agreement to which we require all our users to adhere (we call this the Childcare Agreement).
2. Opening your account
We will require you to provide necessary personal information in order to create an account, including your name, contact details, and details of your family. We operate a 'passwordless' login system which uses SMS messages to verify your access to our app and site. You will be asked to provide your mobile phone number as part of the onboarding process. You may provide an email address and password if you would prefer.
By way of reminder, our General Terms of Use set out certain terms relating to the information you provide to us and to account security and our Privacy Notice sets out details of how we may use that information.
A word on data protection: our Privacy Notice also describes how we may use personal data relating to your children which is stored in our platform. For the most part, that data is stored in order to help you and your Childminder work together and communicate easily. We may if necessary use that data ourselves for quality and safeguarding purposes or in case of emergency. You should make sure you’ve read and understood that Privacy Notice not just for your own peace of mind, but on behalf of your children. If your child is of reading age, our Privacy Notice also includes a child-friendly notice which they can read themselves and which you should provide to them.
3. Working with us and with childminders
Matching Parents and Childminders
Once you have provided us with all necessary information, we may introduce you to, or you may request introductions to, Childminders who are local to you or may otherwise meet your requirements. We do not guarantee that any Childminder meeting your requirements will be available. All Childminders to whom we introduce you will have completed our standard vetting and checks.
Once an appropriate Childminder has been identified, you and the Childminders will follow our family onboarding process, which will give you the opportunity to meet each other over the telephone or in person. Throughout the process both you and the Childminder will always have the right to change your mind and not proceed with the proposed engagement. As part of this process, we will solicit from you and from the Childminder all necessary information which is required to be documented in the Childcare Agreement (such as the details of the family, details of care to be provided, fees and additional charges, and any special arrangements).
The Childcare Agreement
Once the onboarding process is complete, you and the Childminder will enter into the Childcare Agreement. If there are any specific contractual arrangements which you wish to agree with the Childminder in relation to your engagement, then we will try to accommodate them, but the Childcare Agreement may not be varied without our prior written approval.
Rates and billing
The rates payable by you to the Childminder will be as agreed in the Childcare Agreement. For ease of billing, rates will be invoiced monthly on a fixed basis, based on your needs anticipated in the Childcare Agreement. If any balancing adjustment needs to be made to reflect fewer or more hours’ care provided in any particular month, then we will make that adjustment in a subsequent month’s invoice. Any additional fees incurred during any month (such as late pick-ups, meals, outings etc.) will be added to the following month’s invoice.
In addition to the Childminder's rates, we will at the same time invoice you for our fees (which will be expressly identified on the relevant invoice) as agreed with you during the onboarding process. When you make payment of the invoice, the portion of the invoice attributable to the Childminder’s childcare services will be remitted to the Childminder, and the portion attributable to our fees will be remitted to us.
We may revise our fees from time to time by no less than eight (8) weeks’ notice.
Your and the Childminder's general obligations
In order to ensure a uniformly excellent user experience, we require all Childminders to comply with certain basic standards, (if you wish to review these, they are set out in the Childminder Terms of Use).
As a Parent, we likewise require you to treat our Childminders in a professional and courteous manner. Under the Childcare Agreement, each Childminder may decline to provide further services if they are subject to abuse and if we receive complaints of that nature we may likewise decline to provide you with our Services.
You must also comply with your obligations under the Childcare Agreement.
Using our Services
You must use all available functions of our Services in your dealings with Childminders wherever possible. In particular:
- all messages between you and Childminder relating to your childcare services should be sent using the secure messaging features of our App wherever possible;
- all bookings and rescheduling should be made using the relevant features of our App wherever possible; and
- all invoicing shall be conducted through us.
Reporting
In the unlikely event that a major concern relating to any aspect of the Early Years Foundation Stage Framework’s requirements is flagged by tiney or is brought to our attention, we are required by law to follow the appropriate reporting procedure in relation to Ofsted and the Local Authority
4. Term and Termination
Termination by you. Our contract with you will be formed on your acceptance of our Terms. You may terminate that contract at any time by no less than six (6) weeks’ written notice to us. You must notify any relevant Childminder of such termination at the same time.
Termination by us. We may terminate our contract with you as described in our General Terms of Use.
Effect of termination. On termination of our contract with you, we will immediately cease to provide you with the Services. We will make any data hosted by us on your behalf (such as messaging data) available to you for transfer within thirty (30) days. After that thirty (30) day period, we will not be under any obligation to you to preserve any data or records relating to your services (but may do so to the extent necessary for our own lawful purposes or to comply with applicable law).
Termination of our contract with you will automatically give rise to termination of the Childcare Agreement at the same time, in accordance with its terms.
Last updated: 29th April 2021
