In June, the Care Inspectorate published its new draft Quality Framework for Daycare of Children, Childminding and School Aged Childcare – and as part of their testing and consultation process, SCMA has submitted a detailed response on behalf of members.
SCMA’s response aims to engage and influence the Care Inspectorate on a number of important issues; highlighting the concerns we have on the potential impact that the Quality Framework, in its current state, will have on the childminding workforce. These include:
- the timing of introducing the new Quality Framework – aiming for exceptional is admirable, but unrealistic whilst we are still in the midst of the pandemic.
- Overall consultation and survey results may be distorted, as childminders remain extremely busy, overloaded and may be unable to dedicate time for participating in the consultation.
- Feedback and issues raised for Key Questions 1-5 (including concern that Key Question 5 duplicates on-going risk assessment activity).
- Requirement for document language and content to be inclusive for all setting types, including being applicable and relatable to childminding services.
- Requirement for Care Inspectorate documentation to be shorter, presented in plain English, with summaries of key points and easier to use.
In addition, as part of this consultation, we also reinforced our concerns relating to the unsustainable workloads being placed on childminders at this time, and the increasing bureaucracy that it involves.
We have advised that the matters raised in our response are applied to the final framework, to improve readability, accessibility, understanding and future use.
You can read SCMA’s response to the Care Inspectorate in full
HERE.