Training subsidies for capital childcare

The local council has worked with the childcare partnership to develop the programme, which offers 1,000 free courses in areas such as first aid, food hygiene and health and safety. These are open to all childcarers, including out-of-school workers, childminders and nursery workers in the private and voluntary sector.

The programme will also offer around 300 people access to a range of nationally recognised courses, including the HNC in childcare and education and level 2 and 3 Scottish Vocational Qualifications in both early education and childcare and playwork.

Jacquie Pepper, senior officer for the childcare partnership, said, 'We are providing a huge subsidy for the training. We are asking the employer to pay 100, and the individual to pay the same amount although they can claim a contribution through the individual learning accounts scheme, so the most any childcarer should have to pay is 25.' The programme is funded by Pounds 500,000 from the Scottish Executive's national initiative, 'Childcare: the training challenge', announced in July 2000. It was devised with the help of questionnaires sent out to providers and an audit of the city's childcare training needs carried out by consultants Blake Stevenson last year.

Ms Pepper said, 'That gave us a huge insight into barriers to training, a lot of which was about cost and staff cover. We have designed it so people can manage it while carrying out their job to cause minimum disruption.' The Scottish Executive money covers two years, but Edinburgh is looking at developing a five-year strategy to include management and refresher training. The Early Years National Training Organisation's 15-hour childcare orientation programme 'Making Choices', will also be piloted by six voluntary organisations in the city this autumn.

It is hoped that the training programme will help to turn the tide of current recruitment problems. Karen Fairlamb, chair of the Edinburgh partnership, said that private nurseries had shortages of qualified staff, while playgroups and out-of-school clubs face difficulties as they can rarely offer full-time jobs. Edinburgh's private nurseries are required to observe an adult:child ratio of 1:5, compared with 1:10 in council-run nurseries, which makes it harder for them to offer competitive salaries. However, the Scottish Executive proposes to create a level playing field with a 1:10 ratio in all childcare settings.