Parents are asked to engage with providers in return for free childcare

The fundamental concept of the government’s “free entitlement” to childcare has become the subject of a heated debate.

At the recent Conservative Party conference, June O’Sullivan, chief executive of the London Early Years Foundation, raised the issue that referring to childcare for disadvantaged two-year-olds as “free” devalues provision in the eyes of parents. She argued that parents should receive the entitlement in return for attending parenting classes or signing up to parenting plans.

O’Sullivan’s take on the use of the word “free” has been met with approval from providers across the sector, with the National Day Nurseries Association (NDNA) suggesting the 15 hours of nursery care available to disadvantaged two-year-olds from September 2013 would be better described as “funded” as opposed to “free”.

But rather than requiring parents to take part in parenting classes, the NDNA suggests that the entitlement could act as an opportunity to provide integrated support for parents, such as Jobcentre Plus sessions hosted by nurseries to offer access to work and training opportunities.

Sarah Steel, managing director of nurseries chain The Old Station Nursery, says the two-year-old entitlement creates an opportunity for early years settings to engage more with parents. Steel says she is sympathetic to O’Sullivan’s argument that the entitlement should be linked to some sort of increased commitment from parents. But she is wary about linking the entitlement formally to parenting classes.

“There are ways parents could be encouraged to be more engaged, but why should they go to parenting classes?” she says. “They’ll think: I’m already a good parent.” She adds that many settings already try to extend children’s learning into the home by providing books, newsletters and online information for families, while working with local children’s centres to offer childcare to children whose parents are doing interviews, training or parenting courses.

Lack of funding
But a lack of funding is making it difficult to expand on this, she says. Moreover, practitioners are finding it even more difficult to do such work with parents, because the two-year-old entitlement is increasing their workload, due to the fact that it is aimed at the most disadvantaged children.

“It’s taxpayers’ money and we ought to be trying to get as much out of it as we can,” Steel says. “I just don’t know how we’re going to make that happen. We’re already using our staff to sit in on common assessment framework groups. So for every two-year-old we get for 15 hours a week, the nursery manager might be spending half a day a month at a meeting with the social services about that family. If we have 20 two-year-olds that have, for example, speech and language difficulties, that’s a real worry.

“I’d have no problem with us working with Jobcentre Plus – it just comes down to who would pay for the childcare while mum goes off to do her interview.”

Margaret Simms, an early years consultant and former lecturer, says programmes are most successful when they are offered to families impartially. “Success depends on how the parenting programme is sold. If parents are put on them because they don’t get their entitlement unless they are there, it implies they’re a bad parent,” she says. “We all need to be educated on how to be parents.”

She says that parenting support is best when offered on a one-on-one basis to families coming into early years settings. But like Steel, she admits this is unrealistic in the current financial climate.

Any move to require nurseries to offer more parenting support, she warns, could simply put additional pressure on nurseries already struggling to keep up with demands on their staff.