Your Compliance Questions Answered: May 2026 Childminder Q&A Roundup

Every Wednesday I open up the comments on the Clariti Compliance Facebook page for a childminder compliance Q&A. These questions were sent in by childminders this week, and they were genuinely excellent, covering nutrition, risk assessments, and record keeping. Here are the answers in full.

This is such a thoughtful question, and the fact that you are reflecting on it this carefully already shows very strong professional practice.

Your responsibility under Setting the Table is to promote healthy eating within your setting. It is not to control what a child eats at home or override family choices. The Care Inspectorate understands the difference between the healthy food choices and experiences you provide within your setting and a child's individual eating preferences or home diet.

What inspectors are looking for is evidence that you offer balanced and nutritious food options, that you create a positive and pressure-free food environment, that you encourage children to explore and try foods, and that you work in partnership with families.

In practice, here is how you evidence good practice:

• Keep offering a variety of healthy foods. Even if a child regularly refuses certain things, the fact that you continue to offer balanced options matters and should be recorded.
• Record what is offered, not just what is eaten. This shows that healthy choices are consistently available in your setting regardless of what the child accepts on any given day.
• Document your conversations with the family. Open and supportive discussions about food preferences and routines is itself evidence of good partnership working.
• Record the strategies you are using. Gradual introduction of new foods, eating alongside the child, offering choices without pressure, and involving the child in simple food preparation all demonstrate active and responsive practice.
• Reflect honestly in your self-evaluation. Inspectors respond well to practitioners who can identify a challenge, explain their approach, and show reflective thinking. That is far stronger than suggesting everything is straightforward when it is not.

Families retain the right to make decisions about their child's diet at home. Your role is to promote healthy eating within your care environment, share information supportively where appropriate, and monitor for any wellbeing concerns. Selective eating and limited diets are very common in early years and on their own are not a safeguarding concern.

You are right. It gets mentioned constantly but rarely explained properly. A significant change is anything that meaningfully changes the hazards or risks in your setting or outings. In practice that includes:

• A new child starting. Every child is different and a younger child, a child with additional support needs, or one at a different developmental stage can change the risk profile of your setting.
• A child's needs changing. If they start walking, develop an allergy, or begin using new equipment, your risk assessments should reflect that.
• Changes to your environment. New furniture, changes to your garden, a new pet, building work nearby, or even rearranging a room can introduce hazards that were not there before.
• Changes to outings or routines. Starting a school run, visiting a new park, or using public transport for the first time are all worth thinking about.
• An accident or near miss. Even if nobody was hurt, that is a clear signal to review the relevant assessment.
• Changes to guidance or legislation. If the Care Inspectorate updates its guidance, your assessments should keep pace.

What matters is that your paperwork stays accurate and reflects what is actually happening in your setting.

Great question, and there is a lot of confusion around this because different types of records have different retention periods.

For standard accident and incident records, the general requirement across all four UK nations is a minimum of three years from the date the record was made.

However, the advice to keep records until a child is 21 years and three months old comes from a different place entirely. A child can bring a personal injury claim up until they turn 21, so many insurers, local authorities, and legal advisers recommend keeping child accident records until the child reaches 21 years and three months. This is not usually stated directly in childcare regulations but is widely treated as the safest approach for liability purposes.

In practice: the minimum requirement is three years from the date the record was made. The safer best practice for insurance and legal protection is to keep accident records until the child turns 21 years and three months.

Safeguarding, child protection, or serious injury records may need to be kept significantly longer. If in doubt, check with your insurer directly as some specify longer retention periods in their policy terms.