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The government is trying to persuade lone parents to become childminders. But is the policy in their - or their children’s - best interests. Kate Coxon reports.

Problem: the government is committed to reducing child poverty and the main plank of its strategy is to get poor parents into paid work. But a shortage of affordable child care is preventing many of them from finding jobs.

Solution: get poor parents to become childminders, thus providing themselves with an income and other parents with cheap child care.

This is the idea behind a pilot project launched in June. The childminder buddying scheme will use existing childminders in five urban areas to attract new people into childminding and to help them to register and set up in business.

This latest boost to childminding underlines the government’s commitment to child care expansion as part of its welfare to work programme. Announcing the pilots, work and pensions secretary Andrew Smith said the scheme would help boost the supply of childminders to benefit all parents. He added that it also offered parents the opportunity to get into work by opening their own business as a registered childminder. "This will help us with our goal to help more parents, in particular lone parents into work and put an end to cycles of poverty," he said.

Rarely has killing two birds with one stone been more explicit. On the one hand, there is the child care shortage and the government’s desire to resolve it and meet the targets of its 1998 national child care strategy. The Department for Education and Skills’ regular survey which analyses demand for child care showed that a quarter of all families (or approximately 1.3 million) reported not being able to find a child care place when they needed it.

On the other hand, there is the pledge to reduce child poverty and to get 70 per cent of lone parents into employment by 2010. Welfare to work policies mean that child care and early education are bound up with work and benefits.

The government is committed to the increasing professionalisation of childminders - the recent move to ban smoking and smacking by childminders is evidence of this. Opportunities for training and professional development have also increased. And in June the National Childminding Association launched NCMA Quality First, a quality assurance scheme specially designed for individual childminders, which gives them the opportunity to develop and improve the quality of the care they provide to children.

Gill Haynes, chief executive of the NCMA, believes that the pathfinder buddying schemes will offer greater levels of support to new childminders as well as career progression for those co-ordinating and providing the support. "This measure shows that there is a career structure within childminding. This is not a dead end career: we need to make sure that the benefits of childminding as a career are made clearly, widely and readily available to anyone returning to work, including lone parents. It is an excellent opportunity to look after your own children while receiving a professional training and qualifications".

Encouraging lone parents to move into paid child care work is not a new idea and for many parents childminding does offer a satisfying opportunity to work flexibly from home and still spend time with their own children.

But in spite of measures to boost the status of the profession, it does not seem to be a popular job. Numbers of childminders have declined steadily over the past decade. In 1992, there were 109,200 childminders, in 2001 there were 72,300 and the most recent figures, published in June by Ofsted show that there are 68,200 registered childminders in England and Wales offering 300,600 child care places.

Gill Haynes points out that there might be more to these data than meets the eye. "The figures from the early 1990s were not robust. Since responsibility moved from health to education, data collection has become more rigorous". She believes that changes associated with the transfer to Ofsted led some childminders to give it up. But she adds that the childminding community is stabilising, with some recent success in recruitment and retention.

There is little indication so far that lone parents are moving into child care work in large numbers. The recent report, the Evaluation of the New Deal for Lone Parents, showed that only 5 per cent of lone parents were employed in the field of child care. And organisations representing lone parents are cautious about encouraging them to become childminders. A spokesperson for the National Council for One Parent Families says that childminding could work well for some lone parents. "However, many others are struggling for jobs that offer career progression, decent pay and the prospect of advancement." She adds that working in an adult workplace appeals to many lone parents who might otherwise feel isolated.

A spokesperson from Gingerbread highlighted similar concerns. "Lone parents tell us that their main issues are financial difficulties and social isolation. It is important that work pays enough to lift them and their children out of poverty. Income from child care work can be low and this should be raised to reflect the responsible and important nature of the work."

There is a danger that lone parents could simply swap the benefit poverty trap for a working poverty trap. And there are other issues. Lone parents need child care in order to work, but they are often unable to find it or pay for it. Research by the DfES has found that 63 per cent of non-working mothers and 78 per cent of non-working lone mothers would prefer to go out to work or study if they had good quality and affordable child care.

The same survey found that 30 per cent of non-working lone mothers cite the lack of affordable child care as a reason for not being able to work. Not surprising when the average cost of a full-time nursery place for a child under two is £128 a week (more than £6,650 a year) and for a full-time place with a childminder for a child under two it is £118. In London and the South East the cost of a nursery place can be much higher - typically £168 in Inner London or over £8,730 a year.

Some of this is now covered by the child care element of the child tax credit - up to 70 per cent of registered child care costs up to a maximum of £135 for one child, or £200 for two or more children. But finding that first 30 per cent puts formal child care beyond the reach of many, especially lone parents. A report from the parliamentary work and pensions select committee of MPs published in June acknowledged this and recommended raising the percentage of costs covered.

"We really need to examine the issues and recognise that lone parents need child care to provide them with a range of career pathways", says Megan Pacey, policy officer at the Daycare Trust. "Being a childminder might not be the employment option that lone parents are looking for, given that they already have caring responsibilities 24/7. They need child care and they shouldn’t necessarily have to provide this themselves."

The NCMA wants childminding to be seen as a career of choice, but the problems of availability and affordability of child care for working parents might mean that for some parents, providing their own child care through childminding is their only chance of paid work. Some believe that encouraging lone parents to register as childminders is a way of formalising and quality-controlling the existing informal arrangements that are commonplace.

There are inconsistencies in the government’s approach. It wants to help low earners with registered child care costs, but childminders are unable to claim the child care costs within the child tax credit for looking after their own children, even though their children are counted in terms of ratios and taking up a child care place. Childminders would have to place their children with another registered child care provider to claim these costs.

There are many questions, but there is widespread agreement on what is needed - more children’s centres, and fast. The Daycare Trust and the NCMA agree that children’s centres are the best way of supporting and promoting childminding - and the work and pensions select committee concluded that the children’s centre model is the most effective way to reduce child poverty.

Children’s centres are also the best option for lone parents, according to Gingerbread. "We’d like to see children’s centres in every neighbourhood with facilities to bring childminders together to exchange experience and resources and achieve qualifications, which would mean raising the status and income of the child care workforce."

Childminding changes

• Buddying scheme pilots will operate in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds during 2003-2004 and will be extended to all local authorities from 2004.
• The scheme gives established childminders the opportunity to share their experience with new recruits, reducing drop-out rates through the early days of registration.
• Bursaries of up to £500 will be available from September to childminders who act as buddies
• From September 2003 childminders with "appropriate levels of training and experience" will be able to care for more than two children under one year.
• Childminders are usually registered to look after up to three children under five and three children aged five to eight, including their own children.

Child care and child poverty

• There are 600,000 children under three living in poverty and only 42,740 free or subsidised places for disadvantaged families.
• There is only one subsidised child care place for every fourteen children under three living in poverty.
• In 2001 there was one child care place for every seven children under the age of 8; there is now one place for every five children under the age of eight.
• Child care partnership managers are in every Jobcentre Plus district, identifying the needs of Jobcentre Plus customers.
• Ofsted figures (June 2003) showed that there are 68,200 childminders offering 300,600 places and 9,600 full daycare providers offering 383,200 places.