Our daughter's "other Mother"
Our eldest daughter was with Gemma from aged 2 and a half to 5 years of age. Gemma is incredibly flexible, reliable and above all very caring. Our daughter became immersed in Gemma's family and I don't believe she ever felt she was in a childcare environment, rather one of the family. She adores Gemma's children and learnt a huge amount from playing with children older and younger than herself. From our perspective as parents it was "easy", we knew our daughter was collected on time from nursery initially and then school, we knew she was eating properly and we knew that she was safe. Gemma encouraged learning in line with EYFS but would never be stuck at home: excursions included the wetlands centre, swimming and even the cable car in East London. Gemma was always flexible with timing and days wherever she could be and even looked after our daughter during her own family party when we were stuck. Our only disappointment is that Gemma is now too far away to look after our other daughter.