Childminders urge commission to retain individual Ofsted inspections
Janaki Mahadevan
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Childminders are growing increasingly concerned that potential changes to childcare regulation could damage the quality and reputation of their provision.
The government’s Childcare Commission is examining how to reduce the costs of childcare for working families and lessen the burdens on childcare providers.
As part of this, the commission, which is led by work and pensions minister Maria Miller and children’s minister Sarah Teather, is attempting to identify unnecessary regulation and assessing the impact of regulation on the childcare market.
But childminders fear that any change to the current regulation of their profession will have a detrimental affect upon quality.
Melanie Atkinson, chair of Hadleigh Childminding Group in Suffolk, said: “We have worked so hard to gain the professional status we have got for childminding. If we do not come under the Ofsted umbrella and are effectively deregulated, we will lose that credibility.
“We have gone to all the parents of the children we look after. Most of them want to keep the individual inspection, they know their children are in a safe environment because it has been properly vetted and their concern is that could all be taken away with the deregulation.”
Childminders in West Sussex have also been voicing their concerns and lobbying local MPs for guarantees that they will continue to be vetted by Ofsted. They warn that losing Ofsted oversight of their provision would threaten their reputation.
Crawley childminder Janice Bradshaw said: “Our main concern is that we might not be inspected individually by Ofsted. It is important for a parent to know exactly what services they are buying into.
“Individual inspection is very important for childminders; we work on our own and we have to get reassurance for parents.”
The National Childminding Association (NCMA) believes the government’s Childcare Commission offers an opportunity to convince ministers that Ofsted regulation of childminding settings is crucial to both the quality of provision and the status of childminders.
In its recent survey of more than 700 parents conducted in partnership with Netmums, NCMA found that 94 per cent of parents wanted to keep current regulations and 80 per cent said it was “very important” that childminders are individually registered and inspected by Ofsted.
Liz Bayram, joint chief executive of NCMA, said: “The commission will allow us to place much needed structure to government considerations of how to make childcare more affordable and accessible for parents, while not placing the safety and quality of care children receive at risk.”