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Flexible Services
The position we want to reach is one where there is a wide range of flexible and responsive services, all of which are delivering a consistently high quality of care, learning and play opportunities for children. Parents should not have to choose between quality and flexibility.
Delivering these services in this way, for children and families will clearly demonstrate the elements of public service reform of user-focus, quality, efficiency, accountability and joining up services across boundaries which we have set out in "Transforming public services - the next phase of reform".
The private sector has been quick to recognise the importance of flexible services, delivering services when parents need it. However, inspection reports suggest that, while many private sector providers deliver excellent services, quality can be more variable than in local authority centres. The proposals I have set out above are intended to ensure that the flexibility offered by the private sector is matched by consistently high quality of services.
Some local authorities have begun to develop services which are more responsive to local patterns of need, and these developments must be extended across Scotland. I want to see more flexibility in the way that pre-school education is offered, in patterns that suit families and that fit seamlessly with other services for children. I want this to be a priority for local authorities - providers and commissioners of childcare. Clearly local authorities will have to balance carefully how they deliver flexible services, whether directly or in partnership with providers in the private and voluntary sector, while ensuring they deliver effective and efficient services.
Scottish Borders Council
Private sector and local authority providers work in partnership at a nursery in Peebles to offer parents flexible all-day childcare. First Nursery, a privately owned nursery in Peebles, is built on land leased from Scottish Borders Council in the playground of Kingsland Primary School. The nursery offers a wide range of services for children, from babies to school age children. This includes a baby room, care for young children, pre-school education, breakfast clubs, holiday clubs and out of school care. First Nursery provides pre-school education for 3 and 4 year olds, and also offers wraparound care for children attending the nursery class of the primary school. Staff from the nursery go to the school to collect children from nursery and primary classes.
Dundee City Council
Dundee City Council Education Department has expanded provision of childcare in all 12 nursery schools. This is offered flexibly to meet the needs of parents. Children can access all day services or can add time on to their pre-school place in the early morning, over lunchtime or in the evening. This care is available on a paid for basis to parents who work or are training for employment. The nurseries have adapted accommodation to provide a relaxed and informal environment where children are in small groups.
Full time placements are also available in all nursery schools and six nursery classes free of charge to children with additional support needs in low-income groups. In addition all year provision is offered in two nursery schools providing holiday childcare services for children from across the city.
In order to provide the flexible services families need, we must have a flexible workforce. Workers must have the skills and knowledge to be able to work in different settings, sometimes with children of different ages; with parents and families; perhaps in different types of centres; or working on their own. That is why I want all parts of the early years and childcare workforce to be similarly skilled and qualified.
Flexible services will not be achieved with a fragmented workforce where parts of the sector struggle to attract the right staff, and where staff are not able to move easily between types of provision. Although I am initially focusing on the early years sector, I expect the rest of the sector to follow as the workforce development programme beds down. Indeed, as services become genuinely more integrated and flexible, I expect the distinctions between the different parts of the sector to diminish. This does not, however, mean that we should lose the expertise in particular areas, or that workers will no longer be able to choose to specialise.
Designing flexible services, and ensuring that there is a well qualified workforce in place to deliver those services, are intertwined. Workforce planning is the crucial component of the programme to develop a professional workforce. It is the bridge that connects development of a professional and competent workforce with the delivery of quality flexible services. I want the SSSC to develop a national approach to workforce planning which will help local authorities plan workforce needs with local partners.
| I have asked the SSSC to develop a workforce planning toolkit for the early years and childcare sector by June 2008. |
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