Almost every childminder starts with someone else's contract. A friend passes on the one they were given when they registered, or you download a free childminder contract template, change the name at the top and hope for the best. That works until something unusual happens and you go looking for the clause that covers it.
Most templates are perfectly well written. The trouble is they were written for someone else's setting, often years ago, and nobody has checked them since. The funded hours rules changed in April 2026 and the EYFS for childminders changed in September 2026, so a contract that still mentions "top-up fees" or a "consumables charge" for funded children is now telling families the wrong thing.
What a childminder contract has to cover
The EYFS never uses the word contract, but it does require you to give parents a long list of information, including your fees, your policies and procedures, who works with their child, how you share news of their progress and what happens in an emergency. If you're on the Childcare Register you also have to give parents copies of your written policies. A signed, dated contract is the simplest place to keep all of that, and you can both point to it later.
In practice a working childminder contract has these parts:
- Who and where: your name, registration number, the address where care happens, and anyone else who will look after the child, such as an assistant or co-childminder.
- The child's place: start date, days and times, and whether it's all year or term time only.
- Fees: your rates, what's included, extra time, how and when families pay, any deposit or retainer, and late payment.
- Funded hours: which hours are funded and which are private, with optional extras itemised separately.
- Absence and closures: what families pay when their child is ill, when they go on holiday, when you're closed and on bank holidays.
- Collection: who can collect, passwords, and what happens if nobody arrives.
- Health and safety: illness and exclusion, medicines, accidents and first aid.
- Safeguarding: your duty to report concerns, and that it overrides confidentiality.
- Information and privacy: what you record, who you share it with and how long you keep it.
- Ending the agreement: notice on both sides, fees during notice, and the narrow grounds for ending it straight away.
- Signatures from everyone with parental responsibility who is party to it.
Where free templates usually fall short
The same three gaps come up again and again.
The first is funded hours. Under the Department for Education's current guidance, funded hours must be free at the point of delivery, extras must be genuinely optional with a way for families to opt out, and invoices must show funded and paid hours separately. Older templates tend to lump funded and private hours together, or make extras a condition of the place, and neither is allowed.
The second is consumer law. Families are consumers, so under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 your terms have to be fair and in plain language. A template that lets you change fees "at any time" or end the contract "for any reason without notice" is unlikely to stand up if anyone challenges it.
The third is that a template can't know how you work. If you charge for your holidays and not theirs, spread fees evenly over the year or close for two weeks every August, a generic template either says the opposite or says nothing, and those are exactly the clauses families argue about.
Template, solicitor or builder?
A free template costs nothing and beats having no contract, as long as you read every line and change whatever doesn't match your setting. A solicitor will tailor one for you, but paying them again every time the rules change gets expensive. Most childminders end up in between, with a solid template they edit themselves and update every year or two.
I built GoChildmind for that middle ground. You answer questions about how you work, and the contract is written from your answers, with funded hours, absence and fees worked out for each child. When the rules change I update the template, and you'll see what changed the next time you open your contract.
You can read a full sample contract to see what it produces, or start your own for free.