Children's minister Beverley Hughes addressed the conference and was challenged afterwards on training issues by delegates. Louise Huckerby from Sure Start Saltley and Ward End, Birmingham, said that many inexperienced students were coming into jobs straight from college, yet were supposed to deliver quality childcare straightaway. 'Some providers are just interested in bums on seats,' she said.
Bernadette Caffery, programme manager for Pen Green Children's Centre in Northamptonshire, said she was finding retaining quality staff impossible amid dramatic reductions in Sure Start funding. She predicted further redundancies in her area. However, Ms Hughes insisted that, in general, funding to Sure Start children's centres and early years was not reducing but continuing to grow.
Jon Richards, senior national officer at Unison's Education Service Group, addressed the issue of pay as part of the solution for recruiting and retaining staff. 'We need partnership to look at the whole issue of pay,'
he said. 'At the moment the sector has no collective industrial muscle, so it can't affect pay.' His calls for stronger unionisation drew support from delegates.
At the conference Ms Hughes launched the Government's Championing Children, a revised framework setting out 'a common core for leaders and managers in children's services'.
Chief executive of 4Children Anne Longfield said, 'Through regional conversations with more than 1,000 practitioners over the past five months, 4Children has found overwhelming support for integrated working. However, practitioners are also asking for help to make integration a reality, with joined-up training and qualifications a number one priority.'
Championing Children is available at www.everychildmatters.gov.uk/deliveringservices/ championingchildren.
