If I was the Chancellor for the day…

Here are my five asks for Rishi Sunak:

First, let us remember that early years and childcare does lots of things. This is not a single-issue mono-outcome sector. It is a springboard to new opportunities for those experiencing disadvantage, and it is an open door to the wider services families need. 

Early years identifies needs earlier and makes arrangements for early intervention that make a real difference to children, reducing costs accumulated later if they hadn’t done so.  We also build the foundations for children’s learning, social skills, and health outcomes, as well as providing practical support to balance work and family life.  

This is a cost to save agenda if ever there was one.  

Second, there are so many stakeholders that need early years and childcare, and I have watched with interest how most government departments have created early years posts or policy across DHSC, DWP, DfE, HMRC, Treasury, Cabinet Office, DEFRA, BEIS, DIT, HCLG etc.  

That shows why greater and long-term investment, and a cross government funding settlement is wanted and needed. 

And please, let’s not stand by and allow for memories to be short. During lockdown, early years and childcare was quickly recognised as part of the key worker workforce and an essential service to enable other key workers to play their part in essential and ongoing services. That was good news. 

It is now time to reinvent early years and childcare.  And this is an urgent need. 

The past 20 years has been a journey with high levels of incremental change sometimes at large scale, sometimes small.  Now, with the huge and unknown impact of Covid-19 on childcare need and demand, parental employment, and vulnerable children we probably need to tear up the rulebook.  

Here is the to do list, helpfully in chronological order:

1. Achieve financial stability and security straight away.  Not all of the sector is funded by government, but a lot of it is. The rate paid needs to be increased to bring it back into line with the levels we had before the past decade’s increases in costs caused in part by national minimum wage. That should be done now. 

2. Then build in annual inflation busting increases for every year after that. The funding rate needs to increase every year in excess of inflation so there is a better investment in the sector. And make it easier for parents to get help with additional childcare costs. In return, the sector will respond by being better able to deliver more flexible, more responsive services, and wider outcomes for families. They will be able to support their workforce to stay and grow in the sector, rather than to leave it and feel stagnant in their roles. We need the sector to be robust enough to change to meet changing and somewhat unpredictable needs of all parents through Covid-19 and economic recovery. This is a lynchpin service. This is the sort of infrastructure investment we all need. 

3. Next, and I have said this many times, I would commission a really good literature review of all recent reviews and take the best from them, and complete a root-and-branch examination of all things early years for the parts they don’t reach. I would look across all government departments and beyond UK borders as well. 

4. We must talk. There should be a year-long dialogue, debate and discussion to coproduce a new plan and vision. The plan must address all the inequalities and anachronisms and respond to the changed world. The whole sector needs to do more to collaborate and agree. We must learn from what we know and be prepared to be bold in a new direction.  

5. We must plan together. A 20-year plan should extend beyond funding settlements and invest in quality at all points, workforce development and progression, and a radical approach to making things simpler across the early years and childcare system. The systems need to be easier for all, for ease of access to reduce unnecessary burdens and barriers for providers and parents.  The minimisation of risks related to government funding should not be disproportionate to the systems put in place to mitigate them.  That has never been truer than now.  Each year should have ambitious and achievable reforms within them.  We cannot wait decades for such a difference. 

There is a moral duty to do what we can to ensure services are responsive, adequate and effective, so they provide equality of opportunity and tackle disadvantage. 

The effects of Covid-19 could very likely be multi-generational and are at risk of impacting on children’s and families’ opportunities extensively. 

By taking these actions, we will be much closer to the rewards we all want and need by supporting our youngest and most vulnerable children, and their families. We will all need to work hard to recover and to help families, the economy and the country to rebuild. We know how this can be done, we need half a chance to prove it. Because childcare changes lives.

James Hempsall is director of Hempsall’s Consultancy