There was a 22 per cent drop in the number of registered childminders in Scotland between 1998 and 2003, according to statistics published by the Scottish Executive last week.
The Summary Results of the 2003 Survey of Childminders, available on www.scotland.gov.uk, reveal that there are 6,211 childminders in Scotland - a significant drop since the Executive's last count of total childminder numbers in 1998.
Maggie Simpson, national development officer for the Scottish Childminding Association (SCMA), put the fall down to recent changes to the regulatory system for childcarers, which saw the Scottish Commission for the Regulation of Care take over responsibility for registering and inspecting childminders from local authorities in April 2002.
However, she felt that numbers would now begin to rise, and pointed out that the implementation of the Children Act 1989 was followed by a similar drop.
'It's a result of different pro-cesses not going as smoothly as they might have done,' she said. 'It is a worry and if it continued it would be a problem - after all, the National Childcare Strategy is all about creating more places.' The survey also found that each childminder provided care for an average of four children, and that one-third had between two and five years' experience in childminding, while a quarter had six to ten years' experience. However, 78 per cent had no qualification that related to childcare.
Ms Simpson said that the statistics on qualification levels did not reflect the number of childminders undertaking on-the-job training. She pointed out that childminders were not likely to undertake the most appropriate qual- ification - the SVQ Level 3 in early years care and education - at the outset and said that the SCMA was encouraging preparatory training.
Some further education colleges had been successful in delivering SVQs to childminders, including Inverness, Dundee and Borders, she added. 'There is an appetite for accessing qualifications among childminders - it's about getting acknowledgement,' she said.
Half the respondents to the survey worked more than 35 hours a week, but only 17 per cent earned more than 200 a week, with 46 per cent earning under 99 a week and 23 per cent earning under 50 a week.
Ms Simpson said, 'That's a high proportion of childminders earning little money. In rural areas, a childminder can be the only provider of daycare. It may make sense to subsidise that service. In some cases childminding has been subsidised by the New Opportunities Fund.'
