After sitting in my front room and having a woman drone on and on about having to complete mountains of paperwork, she's finally gone... over two hours later!
I hate this job...it's utterly fucking dumb - now! I am going to have to go on an eight week course, starting in November, and because I need a first aid course, and the only one available is in the starting childminding course, I (and Mum) have to do the entire course, from the beginning! How fucking insulting is that?!?! I need to go on a course TO TELL ME HOW TO DO A JOB I'VE BEEN DOING FOR OVER 17 YEARS!! Eight Saturdays in a row - how fucking splendid!!!!!
The gist of it is, everything the child does, learns, new things they say... every facet of their daily life now has to be recorded and written in a diary so that OFSTED can see what you've been doing! Weekly time logs have to be signed by the parents... risk assessments have to be carried out on any journey you may be planning (which involves doing dry runs and seeing where any trouble may lurk!) - bang goes the visit to the farm I was planning for tomorrow. We should even be doing a monthly fire drill! The kids are in the room nearest the front door! How the hell would a three year old understand a fire drill?! We can't even take pictures of the kids with mobile phones, because they are not secure and the pictures could be found by paedophiles. WTF?!?! Even to have the kids own Dad be able to pick them up we have to get written consent from their Mum (because they are separated). She even suggested a visitor's book to log everyone that comes into the house... but we don't get any visitors.
I'm more pissed off at being told I have to go on a food safety and hygiene course... I've been cooking for almost 20 years and no one has EVER been ill from anything I have ever prepared. How insulting, demeaning and degrading is that going to be?!
I so wish I could do something else... anything else... if I could quit, I would. I don't think I can do this shit anymore. They are making it so demoralising that I don't want to.
I now have two inches of paperwork I have to read and "implement"... I even have to get a Criminal Record check done on a friend that is coming to stay with us in October, because he will be in the house at the same time as the children - he'll be here a week and won't even be around the kids.
Never before have I wished I could do something else. I have nothing to fall back on, though, nothing else I can go and get a job in. I'd rather clean toilets than do this job, now.
I'm equal parts furious, pissed off, sad and utterly drained. Plus I'm crying out of sheer temper and frustration.
What a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year it will be!
I've never heard such a load of bollocks in all my life... all this since Baby P and Victoria Climbie... only problem being is that they were killed by their own family, not their childcare! Maybe if parents were subject to half of the stuff that I have to do now, it will help more kids. Shame that will never happen, though.
