SOCIAL WORK DAYCARE SERVICES FOR CHILDREN IN SCOTLAND, NOVEMBER 1997:

STATISTICAL INFORMATION NOTE

INTRODUCTION

Background

In November 1994, the first detailed daycare survey was carried out by The Scottish Office and local authorities. The results of this survey were published in March 1996 in statistical bulletin no. SWK/DC1/1996.

Under The Children Act 1989, local authorities are required to review their daycare services for children under eight years of age at least once every three years. To coincide with the second triennial review, a further detailed survey was carried out in November 1997 by The Scottish Office, Social Work Services Group (SWSG). This Information Note summarises some of the main results of the November 1997 survey. In addition, there is a table towards the rear of this Information Note containing summary information on the number of childminders in Scotland.

Coverage of Survey of Daycare Establishments

The survey was intended to cover all nurseries, playgroups, playschemes, out of school care schemes, crèches and family centres which were registered with local authorities, with the exception of those nursery schools/classes which were classed as educational establishments, as they submitted returns separately to The Scottish Office Education and Industry Department (SOEID) through the annual Pre-School Census.

Some facilities have entered partnership arrangements with both the local authority education and social work departments. Consequently, some of these facilities may have been surveyed by both SWSG and SOEID. Although this issue is currently being investigated, it should be noted that there may be an element of "double counting" between the figures in this Information Note and those published on nursery schools/classes by SOEID in the bulletin Edn/B1/1998/9 entitled "Summary Results of the 1997-98 School Census".

The number of facilities covered by this survey is estimated to be around 3,540. These facilities were asked to provide detailed information on daycare as at the week beginning Monday 17^th November 1997. Responses were obtained from 2,862 facilities, giving an estimated response rate of just over 80 per cent. This response rate did, however, vary from area to area. In some local authority areas, the required details were obtained from all, or close to all, facilities in those areas. No local authority area had a response rate of less than 50 per cent.

The figures in tables 1 to 7 have been grossed up to take account of non response. Some of the column and row totals in these tables may not therefore exactly equal the sum of their component parts due to the effects of rounding. In addition, the smaller figures in the tables should be interpreted with caution.

A Publication of the Government Statistical Service

MAIN POINTS

Some of the main findings from the survey were as follows:

• There were around 91,000 termtime places available in the daycare facilities covered by this survey.
• Over 113,000 children under 8 years of age attended these facilities in the survey period. Around 43,000 attended on each day from Monday to Friday for part or all of these days.
• Over 24,000 adults were involved in the daycare of children under 8 years of age, 93 per cent of whom were female.
• Just under half of the premises used for daycare facilities were either school premises or community centres.
• Almost half of the daycare facilities covered by this survey were playgroups.

SOCIAL WORK DAYCARE FACILITIES

Profile Of Daycare Facilities

Table 1 shows the source(s) of funding for daycare facilities by type of facility. (It should be noted that in each of tables 1 to 6, facilities are classified by their main type of activity.) It can be seen that over half of all daycare establishments were funded to some extent by charges and that around the same number were funded, partly or wholly, by fund raising from parents. Just under a quarter of all daycare establishments received funding from local authority grants and almost 10 per cent received Education Department funding.

Table 1 - Sources of funding by type of facility¹

1. As a number of facilities have more than one source of funding, the figures for "Total Establishments" at the bottom of the table do not represent the sum of the figures in their respective columns and are merely given for information.

The range of services provided by facilities is detailed in Table 2. For the purposes of this analysis, it was assumed that a nursery service was provided by all facilities classed as nurseries (this same principle was also applied to facilities classed as playgroups, crèches and playschemes which were assumed to provide their respective services). Nursery, playgroup, crèche and playscheme/holiday cover services were among those provided by the most number of facilities.

Other services which were provided extensively were after school care (701 facilities), full daycare/education (472), sessional daycare/education (639) and parent and toddler groups (538). In November 1997, there were fewer family centres than any other type of facility. Nevertheless, it can be seen in Table 2 that there were six services which were provided more by family centres than they were by any of the other facility types.

Table 3 shows the type of premises used by each class of facility. The most frequently occurring types of premises used were community centres (24 per cent of facilities with known type of premises), followed closely by school premises (22 per cent). The use of community centres was particularly prevalent among playgroups and playschemes (respectively 31 and 34 per cent of facilities with known type of premises) while school premises were widely used for out of school care clubs and playschemes (50 and 39 per cent, respectively).

Table 2 - Services provided by type of facility¹

1. As a large number of facilities provide more than one service, the figures for "Total Establishments" at the bottom of the table do not represent the sum of the figures in their respective columns and are merely given for information.

Table 3 - Number of facilities by type of premises

It can be seen in Table 4 that the number of daycare places available to children under eight years of age during termtime was 90,704. Playgroups and nurseries accounted for the majority of this total (46 and 28 per cent, respectively). The number of places available during holiday time was, at 49,101, significantly lower. Nurseries accounted for 41 per cent of all holiday places while playschemes and out of school care schemes together accounted for a further 36 per cent of the total.

Table 4 - Maximum number of places available at any one time to children under 8 years of age by type of facility

Attendance Patterns at Daycare Facilities

In November 1997, a total of around 113,500 children attended daycare facilities. Table 5 shows that 42,600 (38 per cent) of those children attended for the whole week i.e. attended whole or part of each day Monday to Friday. The majority of children who attended for the whole week were either 3 or 4 years old and, in addition, more of the children attending for the whole week were in nurseries (40 per cent) than any other type of facility.

Almost 71,000 children attended for part of the week. Again, the two largest age categories were those aged 3 and 4, although the number aged 3 was over twice as large as the number aged 4. The dominant type of facility for these children was playgroups (45 per cent of all children attending for part of the week went to playgroups). Overall, 39 per cent of children attending daycare facilities attended playgroups and just under a third attended nurseries. Chart 1 shows a graph of children under 8 by individual age and pattern of attendance.

Table 5 - Number of children under 8 years of age attending daycare facilities by type of facility and age of child

Table 6 shows that a total of almost 12,500 children aged 8 and over attended daycare facilities. Overall, this represented just under 10 per cent of all children attending but the position varied greatly by type of facility. Just over 2 per cent of children attending facilities classed as nurseries were aged 8 or over whereas between 30 and 40 per cent of those attending playschemes and out of school care schemes were from this age group.

Table 6 - Number of children aged 8 years and over attending daycare facilities by type of facility

Staffing of Daycare Facilities

Table 7 - Number of adults involved in the care of children aged under 8 years of age

A total of over 24,000 adults were involved in the care of children aged under 8 years of age. Table 7 shows that 93 per cent of these adults were female. In addition, over half of all adults involved were part-time, with 31 per cent full-time, and 63 per cent were paid staff.

CHILDMINDERS

Each local authority in Scotland was asked to provide summary information on registered childminders in their areas.

Table 8 shows that there were an estimated total of around 8,200 registered childminders in Scotland in November 1997. The number of children under 8 years old covered by these childminders’ certificates was just under 35,000, which represents approximately 7 per cent of the total number of children in Scotland in this age group.

Table 8 - Number of childminders and children covered by registration certificates

FURTHER INFORMATION

Further details and analysis of the data presented in this Information Note are available on request from:

Mr. Alan D. Fleming
The Scottish Office
Social Work Services Group
Room 52
James Craig Walk
Edinburgh
EH1 3BA

Telephone: 0131-244-3745 or Fax: 0131-244-5315

alan.fleming@scotland.gov.uk