Claire

Highly recommended brilliant childminder

I highly recommend Claire’s settling. It’s a home from home friendly environment where children receive personal care and attention.

My daughter attended 5 days a week including extended hours. Claire offers breakfast lunch and dinner, home made healthy meals, an excellent solution for working parents. Not having to worry about meals after picking child up and just enjoying evening together was a big bonus.

Claire offers variety of activities thought out the day, and often takes children out for trips. They go to feed ducks, visit local parks and playgrounds, they attend organised activities like soft play, pop up play village and play groups. Together with Claire my daughter visited Windsor Castle and went on a boat trip on Thames.

When staying in the settling days are also full of fun, Claire has a brilliant child friendly garden with sand pit, swing, slide, seesaws and lots more. Settling itself is full of toys and there ale also various craft activities. It’s lovely when the little one comes back home with a new creation.

Children are well looked after in terms of hygiene which was very important during pandemic. Claire remained open through out pandemic which was a great support for working from home parents.

Claire’s uses app called baby days to communicate child progress and daily updates through out the day. There is also hand over at the end of each day.

My daughter always went to Claire’s with a big smile on her face and could not wait to tell me all about her day on the pick up.

We formed a strong personal bond with Claire and we were very sad to leave.

I highly recommend Claire’s services!

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by JElliott on 03/11/2021

Brilliant all around

Our daughter Nell has attended Claire’s setting for over 2 years.

We particularly love all of the community based activities Nell has been able to participate in,from visiting animal farms,national heritage trusts,boat trips to playgroups and playgrounds and being out and about in the community.

Claire has also well equipped garden with range of activities kids can engage in that she updates regularly.

When indoors, there is always a little arts& crafts activity or a project for older kids that they can get involved with. There are variety of themes throughout the year and is suited to developmental stage and ability of each child at the time.

We have amassed a lovely box of trinkets and photos that we could look back on in the future.

As a parent I find the Bay’s Days app communication system Claire is using particularly useful-there I can find out how much sleep my daughter has had and when,when the nappy was changed,photos from the day etc.This makes for orderly transition at pick ups as I already have all the information I need to hand! and know how my daughter’s day was.

Also as a former primary school teacher Claire is well versed in carrying out periodical reviews of each child’s progress too!

Claire also provides a healthy snack and a lunch to each child-which means there is one less thing to think about in the morning as you rush through the door.

Claire is an excellent and clear communicator and will work together with parents on things like toilet training,transitioning from the bottles, or any potential behavioural issues as kids grow older.

Most recently Claire looked after our daughter while we welcomed another girl. Her help and support in preparing Nell for such a huge change has been invaluable and we believe contributed towards a very successful transition to Nell becoming and embracing being an older sister with no dramas!

For that we could truly not thank her enough.

In fact her little sister Ada is about to be looked after Claire again in the coming months.

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by chamsk on 02/11/2021

Some good, some bad..

My husband and I used Claire’s childminding services to look after our 3 year old. With him starting school next September, we were especially pleased to have found Claire who has teaching qualifications and experience with young children. Claire is passionate about her work and offers a good range of activities for the children which includes trips to the farm, soft play, picnics in the local park etc.

Although passionate about her work, we found using Claire’s services challenging which caused anxiety and uncertainty. We terminated our contract with Claire with immediate effect after one month due to the never ending policies that we were forced to sign and general passive aggression which came in the form of newsletters, text messages and emails some of which included rules such as - Children must have their personal toys removed before ringing the bell, not to bump cars on the curb outside her house (public road), no child with any form of injury will be allowed inside the house before filling out an online form (which must be done in advance of turning up), no parents allowed to step foot in the house; the list goes on.

Our biggest problem came when we were forced to sign a policy (one week after our settling in cancellation agreement came to an end) where Claire insisted on collection of our child within 30 minutes of displaying any form of COVID symptom. Claire has advised that any child with a cough (even if a negative
PCR test has been obtained) will not be welcome at the setting; failure to pick them up outside of this timeframe will result in a written warning! For us, this was the last straw. Having attending multiple child settings previously, this was the most absurd and unrealistic demand we've had.

Whilst I understand that Claire aims is to provide a safe setting for the children and herself, her strict rules surrounding (pretty much) everything is tiring, exhausting and a big cause of uncertainty for working parents -especially going into the winter months. Claire will maintain that she is only following government guidelines whilst constantly ignoring common sense and reason behind the advice.

I believe Claire is a good person who wishes to run an efficient childminding business. Unfortunately, despite these qualities Claire struggles to shake off the strict school teacher mentality which is directed at both the children and parents alike.

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by Vanessa on 02/11/2021

Response by Claire on 19/02/2025:

This review was left during the covid pandemic. All childcare settings were issued with guidance to follow, and I took this very seriously. Any requests for collection were made due to following this guidance to reduce the risk of infection spreading.

Where children were attending other settings who weren't following the guidance, it made it difficult for parents to understand why I was following it.

I take the health and safety of all the children in my care very seriously, and keep myself up to date with the latest guidance regarding illness and infection.

Excellent babysitter

We hired Claire for a one-off babysit of our son while away from home, getting married in Windsor. Claire was perfect! She met with us when we arrived the day before and our son took to her instantly. She was very friendly and chatted with us easily, while being attentive to our son. Bless her, she even asked what we wanted her to wear as she would be putting in an appearance at our wedding!!

On the day, Claire arrived when she said she would and again, our son was happy to go to her instantly, despite being really tired and grumpy by then. Claire was able to entertain our son in our room and get him to sleep for a bit, changed his bum, called for me when he needed his Mummy and sat with him so we could enjoy our wedding evening without worrying about him.

We would absolutely recommend Claire and if needed we'd use her again in a heartbeat!

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by Claire on 01/05/2019

Absolutely Fantastic care & happy 1st time parents

We couldn't be happier - knowing that our son (from 11 months) is so well looked after at Claire's Bears as he shows clear signs of joy when being dropped off and picked-up. In only 4 weeks of part-time care (2 days/week), he progressed so much in his development: overcoming separation anxiety, going from crawling to stable walking, improved communication (finger pointing and babbling) to nearly speaking now! She has also helped us on number of occasions by being so accommodating and flexible with her schedule, in addition to being a great parent who understands parents. Her communication is fantastic - always keeping us informed and in real-time by WhatsApp and use of Baby’s Days app that captures daily reports, photos and all the little one’s daily activities (nappy changes, bottle feeds, etc) which makes you feel like you are always there and know what’s happening at all times😊 Her setting is always maintained clean, child-friendly, safe and welcoming. In addition to all the top complements on Claire’s organisation, scheduling and care, special thanks to her lovely 2 kids who greatly contributed to our little one’s development and happiness at the setting too.

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by AriD1981 on 13/03/2019

Great

Claire has provided excellent care for my son (age 12 months to 20 months). It is evident how much he enjoyed himself at Claire’s setting, always more than happy to be dropped off and to start playing.
Claire used a system where all updates would be logged incl photos/videos on a daily basis, so I always knew what exactly my son has been up to.
Thanks Claire for everything!

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by Parent on 17/05/2018