Our daughter started to go to Alison right after the first lockdown in June 2020, when she was about 1.5 years old. We had a terrible experience with a nursery before the lockdowns. As two working parents, we would get calls from the nursery saying that she had 37.7 C temperature and if it was to hit 38C we needed to go and pick her up. We would be like "well, call me if it hits 38C, why you are calling us now?!".

Alison has always made health and safety of the kids a priority and our daughter did not catch illnesses as much as other kids of friends who were going to crowded nurseries or childminders. But she also remained reasonable and would never stress us out like the nursery did.

We are a couple who moved to the UK about 7 years ago with no family or their childcare support in here. Both of our parents are living in another country. Alison has not just been our childminder, she has been our support system. Given a reasonable notice, she would try to accomodate any ad hoc late pick ups. We have even asked her to look after our daughter for a few hours over a weekend so that we could have a date lunch on our wedding anniversary and she said "no problem at all". She is also as flexible and understanding as possible when it comes to start/end times.

Even my daughter thinks that Alison is her grandmother and I think this tells enough about how caring she is.

• Overall
• Setting
• Cleanliness
• Food
• Communication