A new edition (April 2017) of the Early Learning and Childcare (ELC) Report which draws together the current state of childminding services in Scotland to deliver funded ELC to eligible two year olds is now available for download on the SCMA website. CLICK HERE to download the report.
The report focuses on how each local authority is progressing with their plans to deliver ELC allowing parents an appropriate degree of choice when deciding how to access services within their local communities.
Currently only 15 local authorities across Scotland are currently partnering with childminders to deliver ELC. The remaining 17 local authorities are either working towards partnership or have no apparent plans to use childminder services to deliver ELC within their locality areas. There are 5,954 professional childminding services in Scotland, providing the capacity to mind 34,220 children (Care Inspectorate Report, November 2016). Over 94% of childminders meet the expected quality grading to deliver funded ELC. Alarmingly childminders are starting to be put out of business in Scotland as children are moved to funded provision. Just over 10% of childminders in Scotland are registered as partner providers. A hugely disappointing 2.1% are actually delivering ELC with eligible two year olds. Only 582 are partner providers with only 114 actually delivering ELC with eligible two year olds and four delivering ELC with three and four year olds. Over 66% of the SCMA membership has signed a mandate asking SCMA to lobby for change.
The report explains the importance of the inclusion of childminding services in the delivery of ELC and summarises the range of information available within each local authority area. It shares updated information around the levels of commissioning of childminding services in each local authority area to deliver funded hours of ELC as outlined in the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 and summarises with recommendations as to how this can be improved in order to deliver high quality, flexible, accessible, choices to children and families.
For more information on the SCMA ELC campaign CLICK HERE