This study investigated the effects of different patterns of child care on the development of children’s cognition, language and self-regulation at 18 months. Data were drawn from the a large-scale prospective longitudinal study of 1201 English infants. After controlling for socio-demographics and maternal care and stimulation, quality and type of non-maternal care were related to toddlers’ development. Amongst children experiencing care for 12 hours or more/week, higher quality care and more centre-based care predicted higher cognitive and self-regulation scores. Compared to children without the experience of non-maternal care, those experiencing higher quality child care had higher cognitive and language scores, and those experiencing lower quality child care had lower cognitive and orientation-engagement scores. Finally, those whose predominant type of non-maternal care was in nurseries had higher cognitive scores compared to those who experienced other types of non-maternal care, or to children cared for predominantly by their mothers.