This report by Coram Family and Childcare explores the current provision of wraparound childcare (before and after school childcare). It finds that local authorities are facing significant challenges in providing wrapraround childcare that meets parents' needs due to funding pressures, challenges with recruiting staff and issues with mapping supply and demand.
Local authorities are facing significant challenges with increased demand for services and lack of funding, with an identified funding gap of £4 billion over the next two years. Alongside existing challenges in the childcare sector, making sure there is sufficient wraparound provision available is a challenge for some local areas, and understanding the availability of provision, particularly unregistered provision, can be challenging for already overstretched local authority teams.
This is reflected in the findings of the report, which found that against the backdrop of greater volatility in the wraparound childcare market since the pandemic, sector experts were consistently seeing shortages in the availability of wraparound care. This is in line with findings from CFC’s most recent Childcare Survey, published in March 2023, which found that only a quarter of local authorities had sufficient provision for parents working full time with children aged 5-11.
Conversely, parents reported that wraparound provision was not always flexible enough to reflect their working lives. They felt providers could be too rigid around needing to book sessions so far in advance that they couldn’t always guarantee a spot, and the hours could be too limited. Parents working atypical hours, those who had long commutes and single parents also reported difficulty in finding wraparound childcare to match their needs. Sector experts noted that the government’s focus on term-time childcare only was a missed opportunity and that unless holiday childcare was factored in, the intervention was unlikely to achieve its aim of supporting parents to work.
The research also found that children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) were particularly poorly served. One parent observed from her own experience that “parents with children with additional needs are excluded from wraparound childcare”.
Amid the ongoing recruitment and retention challenges across the sector, there was concern from providers about the difficulty of finding staff who were willing to work an hour in the morning and from 3.30-6pm and how this would impact quality. Quality was also an area of concern for parents, who tended to consider that the skills and empathy of the staff were more important than the activities that were on offer. Parents also viewed up to date training and skills on working with children with SEND to be able to support all children as particularly important.
Recommendations:
- Local authorities must develop a clear understanding of current and potential future demand for wraparound childcare, this will enable them to support their local childcare market/providers and invest funding into provision that will be sustainable in the medium to long term.
- Some new demand for wraparound childcare is likely to come from increasing work expectations for parents with primary school aged children claiming Universal Credit. Local authorities and ‘childcare champions’ at Jobcentre Plus should set up local partnerships, that help parents find childcare that enables them to work, and supports local authorities to understand the likely changes in demand.
- Local authorities can help support entry into the wraparound childcare workforce, particularly through supporting childminders and leveraging the current start up grant available. Local authorities should set out a plan for how to help childminders caring for primary school age children, such as making civic space easily accessible for trips for childminders and supporting childminder networks. Local authorities should also work with their education providers to look at employment routes both during and after study to help expand the wraparound childcare workforce.
- The expansion of provision must be inclusive for children with additional needs, both within mainstream schools and specialist schools. In relation to specialist schools, it will be important to reconcile any expansion of wraparound provision with what can be rigid times with home to school transport. The government should issue guidance for local authorities on how they can address the current shortages for children with SEND, how to meet any additional costs associated with provision and how the extra funding from the Chancellor could be used to meet those costs.
- Many parents need year round childcare to stay in work, and local authorities have a duty to make sure there is enough childcare for all working parents. Although the additional funding can only be used to support wraparound childcare, local authorities should think about year round childcare for school age childcare, and taking account of the fact that many school age providers need to operate year round in order to be financially sustainable.
- Local authorities should use their own communication channels and work with their providers to help increase awareness of this support. To make sure the greatest reach, the government should also consider running a national awareness raising campaign to back up local communication.