Provision
Disadvantaged families to be encouraged to take up childcare
Children from poor families with out-of-work parents are less likely than children who are better off to attend an early years setting or use the free entitlement to childcare for three- and four-year-olds, says a new report.
The study by the National Centre for Social Research was commissioned by the DCSF to help pinpoint strategies to enable families with 'multiple disadvantage' - such as unemployment, poor health and poverty - to access more childcare opportunities.
Affordability is still a 'major barrier' to early years provision, but deprived families were also found to have more negative perceptions about the quality and availability of their local childcare.
The report called for 'more targeted efforts to improve the provision of information about childcare to families experiencing multiple disadvantage, which may well lead to more positive perceptions of childcare'.
Low take-up of the free entitlement could be partly due to a lack of awareness, the study suggested.
Ian Marratt, interim director of communications at the National Childminding Association, said, 'Hard-to-reach families, and families who most need the support of quality childcare - not just to get back into work but to take up training and development opportunities - are not accessing this support. The lack of take-up lies with the methods of funding for childcare which centre around parental employment.'
The NCMA would like to see child tax credits going straight to providers rather than parents and more Government funding to providers so parents can access more free and cheaper childcare.
Mr Marratt added, 'More needs to be done to encourage proactive work with multiple disadvantaged families, outreach work and visits to parents' homes to bring information about using formal childcare and ways they can access financial support direct to the family's door'.
Further information:
'Families Experiencing Multiple Disadvantage: Their Use of and Views on Childcare Provision' is at http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/research
TAKE-UP BY FAMILIES
- Overall, 7 per cent of eligible three- and fouryear-olds do not use their early years education entitlement, whereas 16 per cent of the most multiply disadvantaged children do not take up their entitlement.
- Parents from the most multiply disadvantaged families are more likely than parents from other types of families to say that they had too little information about childcare (44 per cent, compared with 37 per cent of all families, and 32 per cent of families with no disadvantage).
- Sixty per cent of pre-school children who experienced the highest level of multiple disadvantage receive some form of childcare, compared with 73 per cent of all pre-school children and 81 per cent of children who are not disadvantaged.
