Childcare Bill

The Childcare Bill is scheduled to receive its Second Reading in Parliament today.  

We are using the Bill to complement the Childcare Strategy for Wales “Childcare is for Children”.  It will place statutory duties on local authorities in Wales to secure sufficient childcare within their areas, and also to ensure that parents have access to adequate information on childcare and other children’s services.

The Bill provides flexibility for the Assembly Government, where appropriate, through regulation and guidance making powers.  The timing of the duties and supporting guidance will be in the control of the Assembly Government.  It is envisaged that the new duties will come into force in April 2008.

We seek to underpin the provision of childcare in our communities, while maintaining the partnership approach to local planning and delivery.  It is proposed that local authorities should carry out an assessment of parents’ need for, and availability of, childcare provision.  This assessment of current provision would be set against a judgement of sufficiency.  The duty will be fulfilled if the childcare market in a local area allows parents to make a choice about working, or training and education related to work.  It is not proposed that local authorities should be required to provide the childcare themselves.

In Wales, we have identified three groups of working parents for which the market is less likely to operate effectively to provide childcare:

(a) lower-income families, because of the higher business risk for private providers to set up in less affluent communities;  
(b) families with disabled children, because there is some evidence that providers feel unable to meet their needs; and
(c) families who wish their children to attend Welsh medium childcare provision.

The Bill requires local authorities to have specific regard to the needs of these groups.  Childcare for an area could not be judged as sufficient unless it meets the needs of the community in general and these three groups in particular.

The Bill allows local authorities to support providers of childcare or to provide the care themselves.  It also widens the current requirement to provide information on childcare to cover information on a wider range of services, to be specified in Assembly Government guidance.  This reflects current non-statutory practice.

The new duties will be supported by the Cymorth grant scheme, which includes support for childcare.  The current budget for Cymorth rises by £11.5 million to £55 million in 2006-07.  We have recently issued instructions and guidance to local partnerships requiring a level of Cymorth investment of at least 8.5% to fund childcare projects, including children's information services.  The recommendations and new duties will therefore create no additional burden because the guidance supporting the duties can be made consistent with these resources.