Find resources to support childcare providers and practitioners in delivering early learning and childcare services.
On this page
- Families Information Service Childcare directory listings
- Recruitment and advertising resources
- Health promotion
- Early years foundation stage (EYFS)
- Keeping children safe
- Childcare costs reports
- Foreign language resources
- Equality and diversity
- Healthy eating resources for Early Years practitioners
- Food support information for early years practitioners
- Early years nutrition research data in Nottinghamshire
Families Information Service childcare directory listings
Nottinghamshire Families Information Service and Nottingham City Families Information Service deliver the statutory duties required of both local authorities, helping families find childcare and understand the different types of childcare and available childcare funding.
We also offer lots of useful information to parents, including:
- activities to do at home and in the community
- guidance on parenting challenges
- child development
- healthy lifestyles
- volunteering
- returning to work and lots more
We help providers promote their services to families in Nottinghamshire and Nottingham City. Listings are added on the childcare directory when we receive details from Ofsted and childminder agencies that a new childcare business has been set up.
Families can search the directory to find a childcare provider near them.
Go to the childcare listings on our Find childcare page.
Help keep our provider listings up to date
The directory is a free service to promote childcare. But, it's a condition of your provider agreement with the local authority that these details are kept up to date for the benefit of parents.
We need your help to keep the information about your service up to date. At least annually, we will contact providers with a reminder to check and update their listing.
Register for a provider account on Your Notts Directory
If you don't already have an account to update your listing register now on the Add link to create account page
For guidance on how to register, add link to guidance
Follow Nottinghamshire Families Information Service on social media
You can follow Nottinghamshire Families Information Service on Facebook (opens in new tab) and Instagram.
Recruitment and advertising resources
Nottinghamshire County Council's Early Childhood Services have produced a guidance for recruiting to early years vacancies. It covers topics such as where to advertise, the advert, resources to support your recruitment, using social media and creating video adverts.
Download Early years recruitment: Advertising a vacancy [PDF]
A Job with Joy and Laughter
To promote Early Years as a career, Early Childhood Services have produced a promotional leaflet giving an overview of different early years roles and settings, and the training involved in working in childcare and early learning.
Download A Job with Joy and Laughter: Work in Early Learning and Childcare [PDF]
Health promotion
Healthy Start card scheme
Childcare and healthcare professionals play a key role in signposting families to the Healthy Start scheme and promoting the free Healthy Start vitamins.
Learn more on our Healthy Start page
Looking after children's teeth
Early years oral health resources
A resources pack has been produced by Nottinghamshire Healthcare (NHS) with activities, games and guidance for professionals to use with 2 to 5 year olds. It explains why tooth brushing and teaching children about brushing their teeth at a young age is so important.
Download the Early years oral health resources pack [PDF] (opens in new tab)
Bedtime for baby teeth
A guide to good bed time routines for children from birth until they are 1.
Download Bedtime for baby teeth [PDF]
Children's Healthier Eating Toolkit
The NHS has produced a toolkit that contains ten different activities to help you support families to make positive changes to their diet, with a particular focus on making healthier swaps.
Activities are easy to run with children aged 4 to 11 years, with some activities suitable for children as young as age 2. They require minimal preparation and no expert knowledge.
Download Children's healthier eating toolkit [PDF]
Early years foundation stage (EYFS)
Help for early years providers
The Department for Education has some online guidance, practical support and resources for childminders, nursery leaders and pre-school practitioners to help deliver the new Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS).
It covers:
- support for practitioners
- areas of learning
- health and well-being
Visit Help for Early Years Providers (GOV.UK)
Guidance: Progress check at age 2 years
The Department for Education (DfE) has published a guidance document to provide support for early years practitioners when completing the progress check at age 2 years.
This non statutory guidance will help all early years practitioners working with children between the ages of 2 and 3 years to make an accurate assessment of a child’s development and work closely with parents and other professionals to put in place appropriate support and intervention where it is needed.
Download Progress check at age two years [PDF]
Birth to 5 Matters
Birth to 5 Matters provides guidance to early years professionals on how to support children's progress toward all the statutory EYFS Early Learning goals. Developed by the Early Years Coalition which is made up of 16 early years sector organisations.
Download Birth to 5 Matters [PDF]
More guidance can be found on the Birth to 5 Matters website
Start Talking Together
Start Talking Together is our speech, language and communications needs resource for parents, with a practitioners page for early years practitioners.
Visit our Start Talking Together practitioners page
Ofsted inspections: what early year providers and practitioners need to know
Guidance for early years providers, childminders and early years in schools about what to expect in an Ofsted inspection can be found at Ofsted inspections: what EY providers and practitioners need to know (GOV.UK) (opens in new tab)
Early years child development training
The Department for Education have produced a free online training course with 10 modules designed by experts to provide an overview of child development and gives practical advice for supporting the development of children in early years settings.
Access the training at Early Years child development training (GOV.UK) (opens in new tab)
Keeping children safe
Supporting Bereaved Children in the Early Years
The Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families ran a supporting bereaved children in the early years webinar in May 2021. This was aimed at nursery workers, managers childminders, and other frontline practitioners.
You can watch the full webinar: Supporting bereaved children in the early years [YouTube, 1 hour 30 minutes]
Further resources to support your work with children can be found on the Anna Freud website.
Button battery safety
Swallowing button batteries can cause serious injury or even kill a child.
The Office for Product Safety and Standards has produced a guidance leaflet on the dangers of button batteries, how to keep children safe and what to do if you think a child has swallowed a button battery.
Download theButton batteries Be aware! leaflet [PDF]
Further guidance about button battery safety can be found at:
Choking prevention and food preparation
Learn how to reduce the risk of choking for children aged 5 and under while preparing food.
Visit help for early years providers: Food safety (GOV.UK)
Food Standards Agency
The Food Standards Agency have produced two choking prevention posters for Early Years.
Download:
Learn more about choking hazards and prevention at:
Staying safe in hot weather
Guidance for those working with children on how to reduce the risks of hot weather can be found in:
Beat the heat
Government guidance for everyone on how to stay safe during hot weather can be found in Beat the heat (GOV.UK)
Download an easy read version of the Beat the heat guidance
A Beat the heat poster can be downloaded to put up in settings as a quick reminder about hot weather safety advice
Download the Beat the heat poster [PDF]
Safer sleep for babies in hot weather
The Lullaby Trust has summer safety advice about temperature and how to avoid letting your baby get too hot when travelling and out and about.
Visit Safer sleep in hot weather (The Lullaby Trust)
Childcare costs reports
CORAM Family and Childcare Trust produces annuals reports on the cost of childcare and holiday care
Foreign language resources
Notttinghamshire County Council has developed resources to support people affected by the invasion of Ukraine and for local communities who have opened up their homes to people fleeing from Ukraine.
Visit Support for Ukraine (Nottinghamshire County Council)
Voice of Children is a Ukraine-based Charity that provides psychological and psychosocial support to children and parents who suffered as a result of war operations in Ukraine.
Together with Twinkl they have created a collection of resources. The ‘Living Together in Peace’ resources will inspire children around the world to express themselves about the importance of global peace and show their solidarity to all children living through war and crisis by creating their own Messages of Hope!
These collections of materials have been created to support the work of the charity, families who suffered as a result of the war operations, and anyone in need.
These packs are easily accessible for free and all mental health and art therapy resources have been approved and recommended by the Foundation’s psychologists.
Visit Voices of Children Ukrainian dual language resources (Twinkl)
Unicef
Unicef have created infosheets available in multiple languages with the basics of breastfeeding and bottle feeding babies. They contain straightforward language and simple illustrations to aid understanding.
Go to resources for:
- Breastfeeding guidance in different languages (Unicef)
- Bottle feeding guidance in different languages (Unicef)
Equality and diversity
Supporting you to raise anti-racist children
Laura Henry-Allain, Author of 'Jo-Jo and Gran-Gran', supported by Matel, has written a booklet to give parents simple advice on how to have conversations with their children about being anti-racist.
Download Supporting you to raise anti-racist children [PDF] (opens in new tab)
Celebrating Black History
These two guides to Black History Month and Black Lives Matters provide resources, activities, and tips for families to help empower children to work towards racial equality.
Download them from A Parent’s Guide to Black Lives Matter and A Guide to Black History Month (Yoopies)
Healthy eating resources for Early Years practitioners
Safe food preparation (Foundation Years)
Foundation Years have brought together guidance to support providers and practitioners in meeting the food and drink requirements set out in the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) framework.
Go to Foundation Year's healthy eating and safe food preparation page
Motivation and eating behaviour in under 5s
The first 30 minutes of this webinar from the National Centre for Sport and Exercise Medicine at Loughborough University covers motivation and eating behaviour in under 5s.
Child Feeding Guide: Common feeding pitfalls
Our friends at Loughborough University’s School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences have put together some useful advice on how to encourage your child to eat a healthy diet.
Read more about the common feeding pitfalls (Loughborough University)
Food for Life (Soil Association)
Learning and Skills hub
The Food for Life (FFL) Learning and Skills hub has some great resources about health and nutrition for early years, seasonal recipes, the Food for Life Early Years Award and more.
Learn more by visiting the Food for Life Learning and Skills: Early years page
Food for Life Early Years Award
A Food for Life Early Years Award is a great way to demonstrate that your nursery or Family Hub Network is giving every child in your care the best possible start to their food journey.
Go to the Food for Life Early Years award page to find out more
Food support information for early years practitioners
Impact of child poverty on nutrition
- Currently 18.4% of children in England live in relative poverty (that’s around 30% of children or in a classroom of 30 that’s 9 children).
- Lone parent households and children from black and minority ethnic groups are more likely to live in poverty.
- Around 75% of children growing up in poverty live in households where at least one parent is working.
Read about how Nottinghamshire County Council is tackling Child Poverty
Healthy Start vitamins and prepaid card
Healthy Start is a national scheme providing vitamins and support with food for pregnant women and families (with children under four) on benefits and low incomes.
Those who are eligible for Healthy Start will also be able to collect free vitamins from their local Family Hub. Those not eligible for the scheme can purchase vitamins from Family Hub Network at a discounted price.
Learn more about the scheme and where to get the vitamins on our Healthy Start information page
Healthy Start webinar
This 35-minute YouTube webinar is aimed at practitioners working with people who are pregnant or have young children to learn more about the scheme and how you can support people to access it.
Watch the Healthy Start briefing session (16 November 2023) [YouTube, 36 minutes]
Healthy Start scheme toolkit and national promotional materials
For advice and tips on how to promote the Healthy Start scheme, download the Healthy Start Toolkit [PDF]
The NHS Healthy Start team have produced a set of digital resources you can use in the Healthy Start Resources Library (NHS)
Early years nutrition research data in Nottinghamshire
Nottinghamshire Insight provides access to information, data and original research about what it's like to live in Nottinghamshire.
- Breastfeeding and healthy start programme (2014) research report
- Early Years and School readiness
- Excess weight in children, young people and adults
External Links
- Early Years Alliance Business and Management advice (opens in new tab)
- Early years education and childcare training from Nottinghamshire County Council (opens in new tab)
- Help for early years providers (GOV.UK) (opens in new tab)
- Early years staff wellbeing: a resource for managers and teams (opens in new tab)
- Knowledge Hub (Formerly Childcare Works Resources) - need to register and join the Early Years Expansion and Wraparound Programmes group
- Early years child development training (GOV.UK) (opens in new tab)