Five key pandemic lessons that can make childcare businesses stronger

This all makes giving business support a very tricky prospect for companies like Hempsall’s. Some settings are sophisticated and organised businesses needing to satisfy their investors. At the other end of the spectrum are community and charity focused providers – with the rest somewhere in between.

When the Department for Education released a contract to develop a business support tool for use in 2021, we felt providers of all sizes needed help to manage a childcare business through the challenges of the pandemic. We developed the “Business Map” for early years providers to use with children from birth to age five years. We based its structure on our 30 years of experience, combined with work from hundreds of sessions we delivered throughout 2020 helping providers make sense of their responses to the effects of Covid-19.

Its six-part journey starts with looking at what has changed or is changing and then move onto finding out more so we can identify business risks. This goes on to generate ideas and options so that opportunities are better understood. The Business Map then sets out how to create a plan and reach decisions needed to tackle the risks and make the most of the opportunities. The final stage is to review progress and respond to what is needed, before starting the process all over again. We know the process works, its one we use in our business.

Here are five things that we have learned from The Business Map exercise:

1. It’s time for a stronger national focus on business support. Too often energy has been on the next “ask” of the sector – for example, increasing opening hours, extending flexibility, opening-up places for two-year-olds, 30-hours of funded childcare. Policymakers ask a lot of the sector and they deserve more in return. Lobbying by national organisations for more investment doesn’t help – it results in people not taking the business of childcare seriously enough.
2. Specialist business support for the sector is still needed. Generic business support simply does not cut it. What’s necessary are ways to navigate support and sector specific decision-making. Many leaders in the sector do need to change gear and pay new attention to their business management responsibilities; specialist support makes this happen.
3. A national focus to invest in local action. There should be equal emphasis placed upon business development as there has been on improving the quality of provision. Networks and training should facilitate the sharing and exploring of models, experiences, solutions and change – growing skills, competences and confidence at the same time. I’d like to see business support networks in every region. Some local authorities are too small for it to happen at anything less than regional level.
4. Online delivery has real advantages for sharing learning. Instead of small-scale engagement in business training and networks at a local level, online enables us to come together from across the country in huge numbers and have powerful debates. When we launched the Business Map during two online webinars in January 2021, they were attended by more than 1,500 providers in one day. Since then, hundreds more have watched the recording.
5. The sector is so diverse, our engagement and handling of it must be differentiated. One size does not fit all. There needs to be groupings based on the shared characteristics and objectives of provision – rather than their traditional type or model of setting. In addition, more should be done for out-of-school provision, which remains a lifeline for families and has been ravaged by the decline of paid-for childcare demand throughout the pandemic.
   
   

• Hempsalls’ Business Map for early years providers is available for free from https://foundationyears.org.uk/2021/01/hempsalls-business-map-for-early-years-providers/