Billboard posters featuring the faces of laughing children, and a mums' shopping expedition are two innovative tactics used by a pilot study in Wolverhampton to encourage more black and ethnic minority families to access childcare.
Although childcare has a proven impact on the health, social development and educational attainment of children, many families from black and minority ethnic communities are missing out on childcare services.
Until recently, lack of information made it hard to determine the causes of the low take-up. However, coming to fruition are two separate action research projects, working directly with black and ethnic minority families across the country to find out why they have not used childcare and how they can be encouraged to do so.
An inclusion pilot project sponsored by the Sure Start Unit, and a report published this week by the Daycare Trust (see box), identify these childcare gaps and illustrate ways to involve black and ethnic minority parents as clients and practitioners within the sector.
A DfES spokeswoman says, 'Research suggests that black and minority ethnic communities experience significant barriers to accessing affordable and appropriate childcare, over and above those experienced by white communities. As a consequence of this, take-up of childcare and early years services tends to be lower.
'Sure Start is committed to improving access to services, and so the Unit is looking at ways to identify those barriers and take forward proposals to try to eliminate them.'
The Unit funded four local authorities - Telford, Nottingham, Wolverhampton and Kirklees - to undertake Inclusion Pilot Projects. The teams are finalising their reports for submission to the DfES next month and these will be published next February.
The DfES spokeswoman adds, 'Early feedback from each of the project teams suggests that local communities involved in the pilot projects are already experiencing benefits resulting from the work.'
Each pilot sought to ascertain and respond to local need. Telford started by gathering information from the three pilot wards, Arleston, College and Hadley, which rank among the 20 per cent most deprived wards in the country and have an ethnically diverse population.
The EYDCP enlisted the help of three women - two single parents and one bilingual, all well known to the community - to conduct face-to- face, structured questionnaires with parents. The survey revealed that:
- childcare was prohibitively expensive, especially for a large family
- parents felt more welcome at settings with bilingual staff
- childcare wasn't available for some parents working shifts, for example, from 2pm to 10pm
- a low level of confidence in using English was a barrier.
Workforce imbalance
All the pilots looked at ways of recruiting more people from black and ethnic minority communities into the childcare workforce to redress the imbalance.
For example, Chris Annable, audit and information officer at Nottingham City EYDCP, says that its 2001 survey found that more than 15 per cent of Nottingham's adult population comes from black and minority ethnic groups, but they make up only 9 per cent of the childcare workforce. This is in a city where a quarter of the under-eight age group comes from the black and ethnic minority communities.
Telford EYDCP training development co-ordinator Helen Bowes will mount a recruitment and training drive among the different communities when plans for a new neighbourhood nursery are final-ised. In the meantime Telford has adopted an innovative approach to make the most effective use of staff.
It is working with the Schools Multicultural Development Service to enable existing school support staff from ethnic minority communities to work extra hours in private and voluntary sector childcare settings.
Helen Bowes says, 'They are happy because it means that they get more work; it makes a link between the schools and the childcare settings; they are known in their communities and trusted; and settings like having people with the knowledge around.'
The staff are used in whatever way best suits the settings, from languages support and advising on best practice in multicultural activities, to telling stories or doing music.'
In Wolverhampton, the access, inclusion and marketing officer Dalvir Gill made an impact by focusing on what many women enjoy doing - showing off photographs of their children and shopping. She used both activities to underline how communities are equally valued and respected.
First she organised a four-week poster campaign using eight council billboards across the city. Dalvir says, 'I did the artwork and we had a photographer. The children are making faces and laughing. The photographs are really infectious.
'It took months to build up a trusting relationship with the traveller families. One of the posters was of a child from the travellers' site. The mother had said "Promise, you won't write dirty gypo next to my child's picture."
'The people were so excited to see their child's photographs on a billboard - they were taking their family, friends and neighbours to look at them. The slogan we used was "Make a difference - be a childcare worker".
'The billboard sites were free. I paid 200 for the photographer and printing, but when you weigh up the benefit to the families and communities, it is priceless. The traveller family felt, "Yes, we are part of society. We are valued and respected and our children deserve a good future". That good feeling cascades down through the community.'
Dalvir also led a shopping trip of African, Caribbean and Asian mothers to buy fabrics and ornaments for role play. 'It enabled women from different cultures to come together and it was a learning experience for everyone as we looked at the different colours, prints and patterns of the fabrics and what they mean.
'The parents are going to work at the settings and make the clothes. They are not costumes; this is not dressing up. Everything will be respected and have its proper name, so we call a headdress a hijaab, not a scarf.'
Positive practice
Meanwhile, the Daycare Trust is publishing a positive practice guide alongside the report of its project. Parents' Eye: Building a vision of equality and inclusion in childcare services makes recommendation for Government and local authority action. It found that in some cases parents had no cultural tradition of childcare being provided outside the family; they could not afford paid childcare; they did not know about tax credits; or they reported negative experiences in the past.
The report's main recommendations are:
- Government should ensure a person is appointed in every local authority to support, advise and train the 'named individual' already required in each childcare setting and responsible for 'equal opportunities strategy'.
- The Children's Information Services should be supported to be more creative about providing information to all communities.
- Government nationally and locally should regularly monitor the impact of the national childcare strategy for black and minority ethnic groups. At present, quantitative and qualitative data on childcare use and experiences by ethnicity is very limited.
The report notes, 'Cultural understanding was also important in getting initial information to parents. CISs and local authorities need to appreciate that some communities respond better to verbal information and some have working patterns which make access to existing childcare services very difficult. Only by involving and listening to communities will these experiences be better understood.
'Some childcare providers felt that displays in community languages or serving culturally appropriate food demonstrated understanding. Our work suggests that cultural sensitivity must go beyond token gestures. Parents were keen to see their culture represented and understood in all aspects of the service delivery and this had been achieved in some areas through effective involvement of parents.'
