Five women lean over trays of shaving foam in a Peterborough children's centre. They laugh as they draw shapes in the sticky bubbles while they refer to notes in ring binders and try to explain how messy play like this promotes child development. "Literacy, because we've been talking about what we're doing; emotional, because we've drawn faces; and physical, because you're using fine and gross motor skills," one suggests.
The women are all parents studying to become childminders through the Accessing Better Childcare (ABC) Pathway programme offered by Barnardo's. The majority are unemployed, as the charity prioritises out-of-work parents. The hope is the free 12-week course will get them into employment at the same time as creating local childcare places.
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