Child health and childminding.

With the objective of determining whether training childminders could improve the health of the children in their care, a controlled trial was conducted among volunteer childminders in a white working-class community in Johannesburg. A small sample of non-volunteer childminders studied did not differ significantly from the minders who did volunteer to participate in the study, except in that they claimed to have more difficulty in attending the training course. The results show that demographic features and scores for the trainee and control groups did not differ significantly before training. After training there were improvements in 4 of the 5 measured scores for the trainee group as opposed to the control group, namely the number of physically detected medical problems, the children's immunisation status, the physical and emotional environment provided by the childminders, and the childminders' knowledge of first aid. The medium-term findings of this study show that training childminders is worthwhile in this community.