The Scottish Government

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Introduction

1. The Scottish Government Education Directorate commissioned GEN and Illuminate to undertake qualitative research with parents, carers and children to explore their views and experiences of early interventions, early years services and support for families with young children. The research findings will inform the development of the Early Years Framework by providing a robust evidence base.

2. The Scottish Government and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities ( COSLA) are jointly developing the Early Years Framework, it being one of the specific policies identified in the 2007 Concordat for such partnership working.

3. The Early Years Framework will be a ten year strategy addressing the needs of families with children from pre-birth to age 8. It will cover the range of services that support children and their families including ante-natal and post-natal care, childcare, early education, health and family support. It will include services for parents and carers that have a critical impact on their children, such as housing and will take a long term, strategic approach to turning around inequalities and achieving better outcomes for Scotland's children. This will mean a shift in resources from tackling the results of past failures to addressing the reasons lying at the root of these failures - treating the causes rather than the effects. The Government will, however, continue to provide support to those people who have already experienced inequalities in early life.

Our Approach

4. Our methods were designed to address the key early years issues and maximise participation amongst target groups. To gather the qualitative information described in chapter one we carried out:

• 36 structured focus groups with parents and carers across Scotland; and
• 22 interactive workshops ¹ with groups of children aged up to 8 years ².

5. We developed a range of tools for the fieldwork, including the scenarios used for opening discussion in the groups; the topic schedule and focus group structures and content; a recruitment pack for intermediaries and participants; and consent and equal opportunities monitoring forms.

6. We piloted the focus groups with two groups of parents and three groups of children as part of the design stage and fine tuned the tools accordingly.

7. We completed 59 focus groups in a mix of urban and rural locations across Scotland. In the groups, the discussions centred on 5 themes:

• Pre and post natal health;
• Childcare and early education;
• Health behaviours;
• Play and leisure; and
• Parenting and family support.

8. Each focus group with adults started with a pairs exercise, inviting participants to discuss a fictional early years related scenario, in order to stimulate reflection on the issues at hand and to help create rapport among the group. There were then brief periods of feedback on the scenarios before moving into the main body of the discussions.

9. The children's workshops were drama based, allowing the children to be active participants, and to express their views on early years issues through techniques such as role play, musical statues, drawing and story telling. We used different structures for the pre-school age groups and for the 5 to 8 year old groups.

10. The outputs from each focus group were recorded and analysed using a framework structured around the themes of the research.

Reporting

Main Findings

• Families frequently do not know where to access information on what services are available to them;
• The skills, attitudes and approach taken by staff are crucial to how service users of all ages assess the quality of services;
• Access to transport is an issue for families living in rural and urban areas. It impacts on their ability to access services and amenities;
• Perceptions and experiences of safety impact on the freedom that parents and carers allow their children;
• A significant proportion of parents and carers do not differentiate between the purposes of early education and the purposes of childcare. This can leave them dissatisfied with the hours provided by early education services;
• The cost of childcare can be prohibitive and acts as a barrier to parents and carers returning to work;
• Children, parents and carers value local provision of clean, safe and accessible outdoor play areas;
• National health and healthy eating campaigns have had an impact on children's attitudes;
• Both adults and children value choice in the services they use;
• Parents of children with additional support needs face barriers to a wide range of services across all of the themes of the Early Years Framework.

11. We structured the findings in the report around needs, experiences and gaps relating to the five themes.

12. Advice about how to eat healthily at the preconception stage, in order to increase fertility and influence the health of mother and baby, was cited by some parents as an omission they would wish to see rectified.

13. When it came to ante natal services, parents wished to have access to high quality, consistent care which ran through to post natal care. However, it is definitely the case that experience of services in this area is mixed. Greater availability of scans and specialist scans during pregnancy was something many women strongly felt should be available.

14. In terms of post natal care, most parents said that what they wanted was advice tailored to them and their family. There was clearly a widespread perception that the care and advice is more generic than it should be.

15. There was some confusion about the difference between childcare and early education. In relation to the former, all parents wanted affordable, accessible, high quality childcare, to fit with the hours that they need to work or train, including over holiday periods.

16. Children themselves overwhelmingly want childcare that gives them the opportunity to play outside and where they can exercise choice over what they do rather than be told what to do. The attitudes and approaches of the adults that care for them or teach them are extremely important to children.

17. The majority of parents believe that early education is an important preparation for school. Generally, they want it to be structured, but play based, rather than taking a classroom approach. They report that, if they want to work, early education should be extended to provide care during working hours.

18. The cost of childcare can be truly prohibitive for many families and acts as a disincentive to work. Even when children are at school, childcare, particularly in holiday periods, can be a significant barrier to employment.

19. Families often find it difficult to know what support and services are available and how to access them. They want services that are joined up, both in terms of how the services are delivered and how they are promoted.

20. Safety is very important to quality of life, we were told. Anti-social behaviour and low level youth disturbance impact on the freedom that parents can give their children.

21. Children often told us how much they enjoy being out of doors. Access to outdoor areas can be restricted for many reasons, including safety, availability and transport. In one instance, a play park which was designed to be accessed through a building's fire doors was declared off limits after a fence was built around it with a locked gate. This meant the fire exit could no longer be used an exit, meaning in turn that no one could enter the play park direct from the building.

22. National campaigns around health and healthy eating were cited by many parents as having had a big impact on children in terms of their knowledge and awareness of good diet.

23. Adults place great stress on being able to make choices about the childcare they use, whether they breastfeed, when they wean their children; and children on what activities they do, where they play and what extra curricular clubs and classes they take part in.

24. Parents of children with additional support needs all told us about serious issues that cut across education, childcare, play and leisure, health and post-natal care. Respite care is too brief, some said; age restrictions are enforced even when a child doesn't have the physical abilities usually associated with their age; specialist equipment for the home is prohibitively expensive.

25. Overwhelmingly, parents, carers and children value being consulted on issues and services that affect them. The majority of participants said that they would like there to be more consultation at local and national levels. Dissemination of findings from the Scottish Government and other local and national bodies on any matters that affect people's children was perceived to be very important.

Children's views

26. The aim of the Early Years Framework will be to achieve better outcomes for Scotland's children and so will focus on services for and about children as well as services that may impact on their lives. It is therefore very important that the Framework is based on a clear picture of children's perceptions, views and experiences of current and future services.

27. The most significant findings from the work with children shows:

• the importance they place on the attitudes and approach of adults who they come in to contact with, in school, in childcare and in health and other services. It is a major factor influencing their perceptions of a "good" or quality service.
• In a range of settings (at school, at nursery and in their leisure time), they value access to outdoor spaces and safe, stimulating environments.
• The importance of appropriate independence for example they enjoy having opportunities to make choices about what they do and the activities they get involved in.

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