CYP Now - Analysis: Childcare - Strategy faces sustainability fears

With 160,000 vacant nursery places at the start of this year, and the end to funding streams such as the Neighbourhood Nurseries Initiative, Cathy Wallace asks just how sustainable the Government's National Childcare Strategy really is in its current form.

When the National Childcare Strategy was announced in 1998 it was billedas the solution to the question of work-life balance.

The childcare sector warmly welcomed the focus on affordable, accessiblechildcare, and promises of a free childcare entitlement for three andfour year olds, thus encouraging parents back into work.

Nearly 10 years on, the Government is preparing to increase the freechildcare entitlement from 12 to 15 hours a week, 38 weeks a year.

More than one million children and families can now access one of the1,250 Sure Start centres in England, and by 2010 there will be 3,500children's centres - one in every community. The Government has alsopledged to increase the qualifications of the workforce; it wants agraduate in every early years setting by 2015.

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