A father of two has launched an app – Kids Covered – to help childminders and parents become more efficient around managing childcare.
Swindon-born Paul Harding (42) who lives with his wife Samantha and their two children in Lechlade, became frustrated with the amount of paperwork required to book their children into childcare.
“I watched my wife filling out pdf forms just to book childcare and became aware of the amount of paperwork childminders have to fill in just to function in their day to day lives – as well as parents. It felt to me like there had to be a better, more efficient yet safe solution.”
Paul, who is a software consultant and coding expert, spent months researching his app – Kids Covered – and after testing for 18 months, the app officially launches on January 1 2019. The app serves many purposes.
“It’s a one stop shop for childminding businesses. Each childminder creates a secure profile and invites parents of the children they are caring for to link to it – for safeguarding reasons this is the best way to approach this. Once linked, parents can book their time with their own registered childminder and flowing from that parents can see live updates on their phones.”
The app allows childminders to do several things including:
*auto invite parents to the app
*set up booking periods that can be funded, mandatory and with sibling discounts.
*take bookings for day care, breakfast or after school clubs.
*keep registers of attendance within the app.
*provide information on EYFS (Early Years Foundation Stage)
*view safeguarding, daily diary, likes and dislikes, dietary needs in the app.
Parents once they’ve downloaded the app can:
*book their children into childcare and view their history.
*pay with vouchers or a credit card
*complete and update safeguarding, likes and dislikes and dietary information.
*see EYFS live alerts.
*get daily diary live alerts in app.
Paul’s app generates income from taking £1.20 from each booking made with no hidden other fees and no monthly fee.
“While there is a fee for making bookings within the app, the amount of time saved by childminders and parents will be phenomenal and will allow childminders and parents to access smarter technology when it comes to booking childcare and monitoring their children.”
Anyone interested in finding out more about Kids Covered can visit www.kidscovered.app.
