Facilitating Childcare Markets
The Childcare Act 2006 expands and clarifies in legislation the vital role that local authorities (LAs) should play as strategic leaders in facilitating the childcare market.
First laid out in the Children Act 2004, the 2006 Act reinforces the framework within which LAs already work in partnership with families, and with providers in the private, voluntary and independent (PVI) sector to shape children's services.
This section contains examples of how authorities are going about carrying out their duties. It draws on the work of:
- The Childcare Implementation Project - this was a group of 12 authorities
who have undertaken early testing on parental demand surveys, working with
parents, employers and providers. The local authorities were:
Barnet, Blackburn and Darwin, Camden, Derbyshire, East Sussex,
Gloucestershire, Northumberland, Rochdale, Sheffield, Southampton, Telford
& Wrekin, and West Berkshire
- The Childcare Regional Network (CRNs) - each Government Office is
coordinating a network, with participation from all the local authorities in
their respective regions together with an external facilitator, to provide
on-going support for local authorities as they undertake work on meeting the
new childcare duties.
- The Disabled Children's Access to Childcare (DCATCH) programme - a
3-year childcare project to help improve access to childcare for families with
disabled children, and to reduce the attitudinal barriers which currently
inhibit such access. The first wave of pilots will begin in September 2008 in
10 local authorities, with best practice subsequently being rolled out more
widely.
The local authorities in the first wave of pilots are:
Northumberland (North East Region)
Sefton (North West Region)
Bradford (Yorkshire & Humber Region)
Nottinghamshire (East Midlands Region)
Solihull (West Midlands Region)
Luton (Eastern England Region)
Barking & Dagenham (London Region)
Camden (London Region)
Oxfordshire (South East Region)
Cornwall (South West Region)
Resources and documents
Examples of the work being undertaken by local authorities on childcare markets
are available under two headings:
Assessing childcare sufficiency (a link to examples/case studies/etc will be
available shortly)
Securing sufficient childcare (a link to examples/case studies/etc will be
available shortly)
The OPM Report on Reviewing Childcare Sufficiency Assessments is available on
the Assessing
and Securing Sufficient Childcare page.
This page was last updated on 02 June 2008
