More free childcare – but this should just be the start

I am shocked and depressed listening to news coverage about childcare how little (generally none) reference there is to CHILDREN and what’s best for them. We’re not talking about car parking here, but human beings.

Finding the right care for your child is fundamentally about setting up good relationships. By ‘better information’ you presumably mean ratings and official reviews. But outsourcing this kind of decision to Ofsted reports or reviews isn’t helpful, and undermines rather than supports parents’ decision-making. I’ve seen too many parents ditch their own judgement in favour of relying on someone else’s box-ticking exercise. And these just don’t tell you the things you really care about. One childminder I know, some years ago, raised serious concerns with their social worker contact about another childminder, only to be dismissed with, ‘Her paperwork is exemplary.’ My sister once (briefly) worked in a nursery where the babies had their nappies changed every two hours – never mind when they needed changing. She described it glumly as ‘a baby farm’. It was highly rated. I daresay their paperwork was fabulous and they put on a good show for inspection.

As a parent, I couldn’t have given a stuff about my childminder’s paperwork – as well as recommendations from parents and childminders I knew and trusted, I chose her on the basis of observing her interactions with children at toddler group and talking to her to find out more about her approach and activities. There really isn’t any other good way of doing it.

No question, the cost of childcare is a worry for working parents, but what we really want is the best care for our children, and to be able to combine work and parenting in a way that’s affordable. Many parents would like that to mean being able to afford to do more of it ourselves. This is clearly better for children than long hours in underfunded childcare settings. The government would do better to encourage and support flexible working options for parents, better quality part time work, and/or tax breaks for periods where parents are at home doing full time child care.

I also take issue with the way the discussion seems to focus purely on cost. Suggesting it should be cheap (the only way that it can be affordable for everyone, even in the lowest paid jobs) is pretty insulting to people who work in this sector, and also to the parents who choose to stay at home with children.

Childcare is a service, but it’s a bit different to finding a good builder, or buying a product. The first few years of a child’s life are absolutely vital to their development, and it’s not trivial to just move them somewhere else if you decide you don’t like the choice you made. It’s not just a question of what’s good for parents – we need a proper discussion about what’s best for children – and long hours in a nursery (free or otherwise) is unlikely to be it.

Spot on wavechange. Parents want to spend time with their children. Parents struggle to make ends meet and keep careers going through the baby and toddler years. Throwing an inadequate amount of money at free nursery care is only one possible answer to these problems, and not the one which is best for children.