Childcare must be flexible as 9-to-5 jobs are a thing of the past

Barcelona targets sound like the latest players sought by Europe’s leading football club. But they are in fact key to the prosperity of European nations and families.

The targets – agreed by a European Council meeting in Barcelona in 2002 – aim to improve the rate of employment of parents with young children, particularly women, and tackle disincentives to work. To increase female labour market participation, the Barcelona targets called on EU countries to provide childcare for 90 per cent of children aged between three years and mandatory school age, and childcare for at least one-third of children under the age of three.

The European Commission has reported on progress twice since 2002 – in 2008 and again in 2013. The majority of EU member states have yet to meet the Barcelona targets.

The Netherlands, where I work, and Britain are two countries meeting the targets. Yet in both countries, I constantly hear concerns that the childcare market is not working and is limiting growth in affordable childcare places that help parents work.

In Britain, we are seeing an expansion of childcare, with the proposed extension to 30 hours a week for three- and four-year-old children of working parents on top of the growth in free provision for disadvantaged two-year-olds. But the UK continues to have the highest childcare costs in Europe, apart from Switzerland.

The nursery business alone is now worth more than £5bn in the UK. But is the childcare market working? Working parents need childcare, but is childcare meeting the needs of working parents? And is government intervention in the childcare market helping it meet those needs?

Many working parents now experience very different working lives. These are about part-time hours, flexible and shift/night working, having more than one job, longer hours, the end of lifetime careers, and so on. Employers want more and more flexibility, with most new jobs and employment growth reflecting this change.

Gone for most families is the traditional 9-to-5 job. But childcare is still based around 9-to-5 work. Most nurseries offer opening hours of 8am to 6pm and require parents to book a minimum number of hours, with increasing fines if you are late collecting your child.

Childcare needs to be much more flexible. Parents want different types of childcare at different times of the day, of the week and weekend, and of the year. That may mean a mixture of nursery, childminder, nanny, out-of-school and holiday club, family and friends.

Thirty hours free childcare a week on the surface sounds very attractive, as it proved during the election. But how will it operate in practice? Will parents be able to use the hours flexibly and with different providers? And what happens outside the 38 weeks of the year currently covered by free childcare?

It is heartening that the government is undertaking a survey of parents on what they want from the 30 hours free entitlement. But this is a huge challenge for those planning “sufficiency” of childcare at a local level. How do we match supply with this changing demand? Will the market do it? If not, how do we help parents get what they need and want?

Flexibility is key. But many providers seem unable to adapt their current model of provision. The government funding for the free entitlement does not help – in terms of the hourly rate at which it is paid and the conditions attached to the funding. Many parents may not want to use more than 30 hours, and some will want less.

Affordability is the other big issue for parents. Childcare costs continue to rise above the rate of inflation and with the increase in the national minimum wage next year, costs will rocket. This makes budgeting for childcare difficult for parents with children aged under three.

So it is surprising that there was not more of an outcry in July when the government announced a delay in introducing the much-vaunted childcare tax break – from this autumn to 2017. Some parents will miss out on savings worth thousands of pounds as a result.

The delay means that childcare vouchers will still be open to new entrants for a longer period than previously expected. Employers manage the administration of childcare vouchers, but parents will need to take full responsibility for managing tax-free childcare. There are currently no government plans to introduce ways for employers to support parents under the new scheme.

So there will be much less incentive for employers to be concerned about the needs of their staff who are working parents, with obvious consequences. Increasingly, it seems that working parents will be very much on their own to juggle work and care.

Will these government interventions on the demand and supply sides make the childcare market work better? The jury is definitely out as far as working parents are concerned. Thirteen years on from the Barcelona targets, childcare continues to be the biggest barrier to work for many parents here and in the Netherlands.

Denise Burke is chief executive of Smallsteps, the largest childcare provider in the Netherlands