The Government’s Childcare Promise – Will It Work?

The Government’s 10-year strategy for childcare, published in December, sounds fantastic with its package of ‘family-friendly’ measures aimed at parents with children of all ages from babies to teenagers.

The strategy has two key aims – to make sure children get the best possible start both before and after they start school, and to go some way to addressing the complexity of working families’ lives in a changing labour market.

The plans outlined by Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, include major childcare provision and support for parents and children including:
• ‘Wrap around’ care before and after school for children aged from three to 14, including children with disabilities. Care during the school holidays for these age groups is also planned.
• The expansion of a national network of children’s centres offering services to families. By 2010, there will be an estimated 3,500 such centres.
• The extension of paid maternity leave from six months to nine, along with plans for a full year’s maternity leave. There will also be an option to transfer some leave to fathers.
• More free nursery places for three and four-year-olds

To pay for this, Mr Brown has pledged that an extra £600m a year will be spent on childcare by 2007-8, and this reflects the Government’s aim of making childcare an issue of public policy rather than a private headache for families.

This has to be generally good news for parents. But it still means that in the main, parents will shoulder the financial burden of paying for childcare. Provision for three to 14-year-olds will continue to be funded through the childcare tax credit system, which still hasn’t achieved its objective of creating affordable childcare for parents.

In 2002-3 parents spend £3 billion on early years services, with another £3.6 billion coming from public funds. The new strategy should see parental contribution for childcare going down from 85% of costs to 75% for a family earning £34,000. But it still a huge percentage compared to other parents in the EU who contribute on average only 30% of the total costs of care provision, with parents in Sweden only contributing 15%.

The other question is that of implementation, of putting the plans into practice and ensuring that high calibre staff are recruited, retained, trained where necessary and given access to ongoing development and support. Caring for children is a highly skilled job requiring not only common sense, resilience and dozens of practical skills, but also a genuine interest in children and their development, and an ability to gain and retain their attention..

Parents will need to be convinced that the Government will be investing heavily in the staff of these childcare provisions, before allowing their children to take part. As much of the planned ‘wrap around’ care is expected to take place in the schools the children already attend, implementation will inevitably involve consultation with head teachers and staff whose time is already pressured.

A case in point is a new breakfast club opening at a village primary in Northamptonshire. The idea was mooted in September, demand canvassed in October, and agreed staffing levels and cost to parents worked out in November. The cost for this half-hour of childcare and a bowl of cereal or a slice of toast is £1.20 a day. It may sound fairly reasonable but for a parent with two or three youngsters who uses the club every day, the costs soon mount. And the costs to the school mount up too – heating, lighting, additional insurance, extra childcare staff, kitchen staff all need to be on hand to make this work. It also means that children will be in school – and potentially in the way – at a traditionally quiet time when teaching staff prepare themselves for the day ahead. The government really needs to ensure that implementation of any new childcare provision is done with realistic, clear-sighted practicality – a room specially set aside perhaps.

Gordon Brown’s plans for childcare over the next decade must be seen as a positive step in the right direction, provided they are rolled out in a cohesive, inclusive way by trained and supported individuals. There is a wider issue here, though, of putting the child at the heart of this strategy. Hopefully, these plans aren’t simply to encourage everyone out to work long hours while their children are cared for by someone else. .

Parents must use the new strategy to make working life dovetail into their family life, not the other way round. Otherwise, we will be storing up problems for our children as they grow to adulthood. But that is another issue altogether.