A childminder must keep a daily attendance record with hours, written accident and first-aid records, a record each time medicine is given, a record of every complaint and its outcome, and basic details for each child. AI can't create these records, but it can check them for gaps and contradictions.
The wording comes from the Early Years Foundation Stage framework for childminders (the version applying from September 2026), and one point is easy to miss: for several records the framework tells you what to keep but leaves how long to you. That gap is where most childminders either hoard everything or throw things away too early, so the checklist below puts a decision next to each record.
The records the framework names, one by one
Read this section as a tick list for your own folder, paper or digital. Each entry says what the framework requires, then what a checker (you, or an AI tool working on anonymised text) should look for.
Daily attendance record
The framework (paragraph 3.103) lists a daily record of the names of the children cared for, their hours of attendance, and the name of each child's key person if that isn't you. Separately, paragraph 3.13 requires an attendance policy shared with parents that says how absences are reported and what you do when a child is absent without notice or for a long period.
- Check: every day you worked has an entry; arrival and departure times are both present; no child appears with an arrival time and no departure.
- Why it matters: the hours also back up your invoices and any dispute about funded hours.
- Where AI helps: a register is a table, so it is ideal for gap-finding (see the worked example below).
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Paragraph 3.98 lists the minimum: full name, date of birth, name and address of every parent or carer you know of, details of anyone else with parental responsibility, which parent the child normally lives with, and emergency contacts. It adds that where possible you should hold more than two emergency numbers.
- Check: no blanks in any field; a second and third emergency contact; dates of birth that make sense (a child recorded as three years old but with last year's date).
- Where AI helps: for completeness only. You can give it the blank headings plus a code for each child (Child A, Child B) and ask which fields are empty, without sending any real value.
Accidents, injuries and first aid
Paragraph 3.77 requires a written record of accidents or injuries and first aid treatment, and requires you to tell parents on the same day or as soon as reasonably practicable. Paragraph 3.78 adds that, depending on how you're registered, a serious accident, illness or injury, or the death of a child, must be notified to Ofsted or your childminder agency, with the action taken, as soon as reasonably practicable and within 14 days. Failing to notify without a reasonable excuse is an offence. A serious accident or injury, or a death, must also be notified to local child protection agencies, and you must act on their advice.
- Check: date, time, what happened, injury, treatment given and by whom, who was told and when, and a parent's signature or acknowledgement.
- Retention: ask your insurer. The time limit for a child's injury claim normally doesn't start running until they turn 18, which is why insurers often want accident records kept longer than anything else.
Medicines
Paragraphs 3.60 and 3.61 require a medicines policy and procedures, written permission from a parent for each particular medicine, a written record each time medicine is given, and telling the parent the same day or as soon as reasonably practicable. Prescription medicine must have been prescribed for that child by a doctor, dentist, nurse or pharmacist.
- Check: the permission names the medicine, the dose and the period it covers; each dose entry has time, amount, who gave it and who was told; no dose logged without a matching permission.
Complaints
Paragraph 3.100 says you needn't have a written complaints procedure, but you must keep a record of any complaint and its outcome, investigate written complaints about meeting the framework, tell the complainant the outcome within 28 days of receiving it, and make the record available to Ofsted or your agency on request. Paragraph 3.101 requires you to give parents the details for contacting Ofsted or your agency if they think you aren't meeting the requirements.
- Check: received date, outcome date no more than 28 days later, what you decided and what you changed.
Information about you and the people around you
Paragraph 3.103 also lists your own name, address and telephone number, the details of anyone else living or working on the premises, details of anyone else regularly in unsupervised contact with the children, and your certificate of registration, which must be available to parents on request.
Records the framework doesn't spell out, but inspectors expect you to explain
- Signed parental permissions (outings, photographs, sun cream, collection by named adults). The framework doesn't list a single document, yet paragraph 3.94 requires records that keep the setting safe and run efficiently.
- Safeguarding concerns. Keep these separate from everyday records and held securely; paragraph 3.95 says confidential information must be accessible only to those with a right or professional need to see it.
- Risk assessments. Covered by the premises and risk assessment paragraphs; the framework says they needn't always be written down, but a written one is easier to show.
- Daily diary or learning notes. Not named as a required record in itself; it is how many childminders meet the requirement for a two-way flow of information with parents.
How long to keep each record
Paragraph 3.97 says records relating to individual children must be kept for a reasonable period after they leave, and its footnote leaves the length to each childminder. So don't hunt for a single official number; make a decision and write it down. A defensible position has three parts: a shorter period for routine records, a longer one for anything involving injury or safeguarding, and one date each year when you review and securely delete what has expired.
| Record | Who sets the period | A sensible way to decide |
|---|---|---|
| Attendance register | You | Keep long enough to resolve invoice disputes; ask your accountant how long business records must stay |
| Child details and contracts | You | Reasonable period after the child leaves; state it in your privacy notice |
| Accident and first-aid records | You, guided by your insurer | Ask the insurer in writing; expect the longest period |
| Medicine permissions and doses | You, guided by your insurer | Keep alongside accident records |
| Complaints and outcomes | You | Keep for the period you'll stand behind and be able to show an inspector |
| Safeguarding records | You, with your local safeguarding contact | Ask them; don't delete on your own initiative |
Write the final periods into your privacy notice, because parents are entitled to know them, and note that parents can ask for access to the records about their child (paragraph 3.96), subject to the exemptions in data protection law.
Where AI helps, and where it must stay out
The framework requires that confidential records are held securely and are available only to people with a right to see them. Putting a child's name and an injury description into a chatbot is a disclosure to a third party, so the rule I'd use is simple: AI sees patterns and wording, never people. Before any paste, swap names for codes, dates of birth for ages in months, and strip addresses and phone numbers. Then check the tool's data settings and terms (what to check in an AI tool's privacy policy lists what to look for). For the wider picture on this age group, is it safe to use AI with children's data goes further.
Three jobs suit AI well: finding gaps in a register, checking that a medicine log matches its permissions, and tightening the wording of a record you've already written. Three jobs don't: deciding whether an injury is serious enough to notify, deciding what to retain, and writing an entry for something you didn't see happen.
A month of one register, checked in ten minutes
Say a childminder looks after five children on different days and keeps a simple monthly attendance table. Illustratively, in a 20-working-day month the table should hold up to 100 child-days. She rebuilds the table with codes (Child A to Child E), hours as times, and no names, then pastes it with this prompt.
You are checking a childminder's attendance register for gaps. The data is a table with columns: Date, Child code, Arrival, Departure, Key person.
Do not guess or fill anything in. List only:
1. Rows with an arrival but no departure, or the reverse.
2. Rows where departure is earlier than arrival.
3. Days in the month (Monday to Friday) with no rows at all.
4. Child codes whose key person changes during the month.
5. Total hours per child code, so I can compare with my invoices.
Return each list as a short table. Say "none found" where relevant.Illustrative output: nine rows with a missing departure time (all on two days when she was out on a trip), one row where the departure reads 08:15 after an arrival of 08:40 (a typing slip), one weekday with no rows because of a bank holiday she'd forgotten to mark, and total hours per code. She then corrects the nine rows from her own memory and the parents' text messages, marks the holiday, and fixes the typing slip. Total time: about ten minutes, against the half hour she used to spend scrolling the table before an invoice run.
The check did the part machines are good at (comparing times and counting). Every correction still came from a human, which is the pattern for all the examples below.
Five more checks you can run
1. Matching medicine doses to permissions
Give the AI two small tables: permissions (code, medicine type, dose, start date, end date) and the dose log (code, date, time, amount). No names, no brand-identifying detail beyond the medicine type.
Here are two tables. Table 1 is parental permissions for medicine. Table 2 is the log of doses given.
Flag any dose in Table 2 that has no matching permission in Table 1 (same child code, same medicine type, date within the permission period), any dose where the amount differs from the permitted dose, and any permission with no doses logged.
Do not comment on whether a dose was safe or appropriate; only compare the tables.Illustrative result: one dose logged two days after the permission's end date, and one permission with no doses. The first is a record problem you fix with a new permission and an honest note; the second may just mean the child wasn't unwell.
2. Rewriting an accident entry so it records facts, not opinions
Before: "Child A was being silly on the slide and fell off, just a bump, parent not bothered." After a prompt asking for a factual rewrite that keeps only what was seen, with a list of any missing fields: "Child A fell from the second step of the slide at 11:20 onto grass and landed on their left arm. No visible mark. Cold compress applied for five minutes. Parent told at 12:10 at collection." The AI also reports what is absent: who witnessed it, whether the child was checked again later, and the parent's acknowledgement. You then fill those in, because only you know them.
Rewrite this accident entry for a childminding record. Keep only what is stated; do not add details, times or treatment that aren't in my text. Remove opinions and judgements. Then list the fields that are missing from this set: date, time, location, what happened, injury, treatment, who gave it, who was told and when, parent acknowledgement.3. Spotting an incomplete child-details sheet
Give the AI only the headings from paragraph 3.98 and a note of which fields are filled for each child code (yes or no). It lists which children lack a second emergency contact, which lack details of who the child normally lives with, and so on. This is a pure completeness check, so no real values go in.
4. Checking the complaints log against the 28-day rule
Put dates only in a table: received date, outcome date, outcome recorded (yes or no). Ask for any row where the gap exceeds 28 days or the outcome is missing. A realistic mistake this catches: a verbal concern turned into a written one by email, with the clock starting when the email arrived, not when the chat happened.
5. Producing a one-page "what do I keep" sheet for new parents
Give the AI your decided retention periods and ask for plain-English text of no more than 150 words that tells parents what you record and for how long. Read the result against your actual practice before sending it; a sentence promising deletion "after one year" is worthless if you never delete.
A polished entry that wasn't true
Here is an illustrative case of how this goes wrong. A childminder asks a chatbot to "make my medicine log look more professional" and pastes a week of entries with initials (already a mistake, because initials can identify a child in a small setting). The output is beautifully formatted and includes a dose time she never wrote: the AI has smoothed an entry reading "after lunch" into 12:30. She spots it only because a parent's text message gives a different time. The fix was the instruction in the prompts above: do not add details that aren't in my text, and compare the output line by line against the original before it replaces anything.
A month-end routine that takes twenty minutes
- On the last working day of the month, export the register and the medicine and accident logs as simple tables.
- Replace names with codes using find and replace; keep your code key in a separate file.
- Run the register, medicine and complaints checks above.
- Correct the originals by hand and add a dated note where you've amended something.
- Once a year, review the retention table and securely delete what has passed its period.
If your setup is more complex (an assistant, or software that already includes AI features), a short staff briefing on children's data gives everyone the same rules, and your parent contract is the right place to state what you record and share.
A filled-in sign-off sheet for the month
A record check is only useful if it leaves a trace. Keep a single sheet, one row per month, that shows what you checked and what you changed. Here is an illustrative row for a childminder with five children and one assistant who covers two mornings a week.
| Check | Result | Action taken | Done |
|---|---|---|---|
| Register gaps | 9 missing departures, 1 impossible time | Corrected from parent messages; trip days now logged on the day | Yes |
| Medicine log against permissions | 1 dose after permission expired | New permission signed; note added to the log | Yes |
| Accident entries complete | 2 entries, 1 missing parent acknowledgement | Parent signed at next collection | Yes |
| Complaints inside 28 days | 0 open | None | Yes |
| Child details complete | 1 child with one emergency contact | Asked parent for a second number | Pending |
The sheet takes a couple of minutes to fill in and gives you something concrete to show an inspector, an insurer or a parent who asks how you keep records accurate. It also shows the pattern in your own mistakes: if trip days are always the gap, the fix is a trip-day habit, not a better prompt.
When an assistant or second adult writes records
If an assistant makes entries, the consistency problem multiplies: two people describe the same kind of event in different words. A useful half-hour exercise is to take five anonymised accident entries from each of you and ask an AI tool to list the fields that one person always includes and the other never does. The usual finding is small and fixable, for instance that one adult records the time parents were told and the other doesn't. Turn the result into a one-line field list pinned inside the accident book, and the next month's check finds fewer gaps.
Keep the rule about identifying detail the same for everyone. If an assistant would find it hard to anonymise an entry, they should not paste it at all; they should bring it to you and you decide whether a check is worth the effort.
Paper records and photographs
Many childminders keep the accident book and permission slips on paper, and AI can still help without ever seeing the originals. Type up only the headings and a yes or no for each field, as in the child-details check, or read the entry aloud in your own words and retype the anonymised version. Photographing a signed form and uploading it to a chatbot sends a picture of a child's details and a parent's signature to a third party, so don't. The same goes for photos of children in the diary: describe the activity in words instead.
What to say if an inspector asks about AI
Inspectors care about the safety and accuracy of records and about how you protect children's information. A short, honest answer works: records are written or approved by me; AI is used only on anonymised copies to check for gaps; no child's name or details are entered; and here is my written policy. If you can't say the second and third parts truthfully, change the practice rather than the answer.
Keeping the checklist current
The framework is revised from time to time, and the version above applies from September 2026. Re-read the information and record keeping, medicines, accident and complaints paragraphs whenever a new version is published, and keep a dated copy of the version you're working to. Where your childminder agency or association publishes its own template, treat it as the starting point and your own written retention decisions as the finish.
Questions childminders ask about records and AI
Can I paste a child's accident record into ChatGPT?
Not with the child's name, date of birth or anything that identifies the family. Replace those with a code such as Child A, check the exact wording of your tool's data settings, and keep the original on your own system. For consistency checks you rarely need the identifying detail at all.
Do I have to keep a daily diary for every child?
The framework requires a daily record of which children were present and their hours, and a two-way flow of information with parents. It doesn't name a daily diary as a required record. Many childminders keep one because it satisfies the information flow and gives parents something to read.
How long should I keep a child's records after they leave?
The framework says records for individual children must be kept for a reasonable period and leaves the length to each childminder. Ask your insurer and your childminding association what they want, then write the period into your privacy notice and stick to it.
Will Ofsted accept records that AI helped me tidy?
Inspectors look at whether the records are accurate, complete and kept securely, not at how you wrote them. The risk is a polished entry that no longer matches what happened. Use AI to spot gaps and inconsistencies, and write or approve the facts yourself.
Further reads
- Early Years AI Policy Template for Nurseries and Childminders — A written AI policy for your setting, with a template.
- How to Classify Business Data Before Using AI Tools — A simple way to decide which records can ever go near an AI tool.
- How to Stop AI Tools Training on Your Business Data — Settings to check before you paste anything into a chatbot.
- How Nurseries Use AI to Write Daily Reports for Parents — How daily reports for parents can be drafted without exposing details.
- How to Write an AI Usage Policy for Your Small Business — A written AI policy template you can adapt for a small setting.
- AI Chatbots for Nursery Enquiries and Visit Bookings — Handling parent enquiries before they become records.
- Daycare Inspection Checklist: Prepare Your Records With AI — Build a daycare inspection checklist from your licensing rules, check staff and child records against it with AI, and keep a corrective-action log.
- Ofsted Supported Accommodation: Registration Prep Checklist With AI — A document-by-document prep checklist for registering supported accommodation with Ofsted, with the drafting jobs AI can speed up and what it must not touch.
- AI for Daycares: Nine Admin Jobs From Enquiry to Pickup Message — Enquiries, tours, waitlist, forms, rotas, parent updates, policies, job ads and invoices: nine daycare jobs AI can draft, each with its risk level.
- AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.
Sources: the Early Years Foundation Stage statutory framework for childminders (the government's published version in force from 1 September 2026), particularly paragraphs 3.13, 3.60 to 3.61, 3.77 to 3.78, 3.92 and 3.94 to 3.103 on attendance, medicines, accidents, risk assessment, records, complaints and information about the childminder.