Cleaning my teeth with Laura Henry & other surprises from a Trip to Froebel’s Birthplace
Recently, I wrote about the importance of visiting other nurseries so I was delighted when I was given a “golden ticket” by Community Playthings to visit…
July 15th 2015
The Government made childcare a central component of its election manifesto. Mr Cameron insists that his Government will extend the childcare ‘free offer’ to 30 hours a week, 38 weeks of the year, to any parent working eight hours plus; the same threshold as the tax free childcare scheme. It’s interesting that the policy talks of childcare not early education, is this a shift or has the Government finally understood that childcare and education are totally integrated?
This promise has deep implication for the sector including making childcare a key part of the British infrastructure. It’s a shift that may have happened as a last minute election promise to outbid Labour’s offer of 25 free hours. Either way we are now facing the challenge of how we make this policy work and we need our own conversation to help us to do this.
Frustratingly, this promise fails to reflect the repeated warnings from the sector about the perennial problems such as:
However, we have been thrown a concession in the form of the Childcare Commission LINK to appease our worries about fair funding. I hope that they will listen to us with the same candidness and perspicacity of Lord Sutherland and his Select Committee.
The 30 hour policy is the Government’s attempt to reward hard-working families by reducing their childcare bill. Done well it will be popular and helpful and may achieve its intention to boost employment rates among women with children under 5 years. Long term employment rate for this group has risen over the last two decades from 49% in 1996 to 61% in 2014. In doing that the Government has confirmed absolutely that childcare is a significant part of a modern British infrastructure.
Surprisingly, we may have an unexpected ally in Mr Osborne. In the Budget he promises the Living Wage, a calculation based on what it costs to live developed ten years ago by Citizens UK. This must surely be a very good benchmark for the Childcare Commission as they work to define a funding strategy that pays the full cost of childcare.
In the meantime, we are strong only when we have one voice – we proved that with the #OBC.
So respond to the Childcare Commission and come to the *Big Childcare Conversation conference on the 19th September at Middlesex University where we will be debating the issues and ensure we remain motivated, upbeat and able to “Occupy Childcare”!
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