Step forward "parent champions" as a solution to the problem. Several local authorities have piloted a scheme whereby parents from deprived areas who have had a positive experience of formal childcare have been employed to spread the word.
These are parents with whom other parents can identify and trust much more than they do official channels of information. The backgrounds of the champions reflected the fact that lone parents, Asian families and non-working parents are among those least likely to use childcare.
The most successful schemes were in inner London, where 51 disadvantaged parents took up formal childcare in Tower Hamlets and calls to family information services in Camden doubled as a result of the schemes. Parent champions told of the benefits of formal childcare among their existing networks, at breastfeeding clinics, drop-in groups, door-to-door among their neighbours and at the school gate. They shared their knowledge about the Childcare Affordability Programme, Child Tax Credit and the free entitlement, concepts that were hitherto alien to the families that were reached.
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