The Ten Years Childcare Strategy - Report Example

Introduction Early babyhood is a vital period in human development. Excellent care and learning has broad-ranging impacts on communal, cognitive as well as emotional progress. Furthermore, a lack of high quality, reasonable provision could be a hindrance to parents of young kids wishing to take up employment. Increasing childcare provision is thus significant for learning purposes and as part of the government’s strategies for assisting people into employment and fighting child poverty (National Audit office, 2004). In recent years, there has been worldwide curiosity in the benefits adjoining early childhood learning as well as the vital responsibility early childhood development plays in societies financial and communal growth has been globally accepted and approved (Dodge, 2004). This obligation to early babyhood learning and care is apparent in the statement Starting strong: Early childhood education and care (OECD, 2001, 2006). Policy makers have acknowledged that impartial admittance to quality early babyhood learning and care may reinforce the fundamentals of lifetime education for all kids (OCED, 2001, p.7). The globally defined period of early babyhood spans the years from birth to eight years. These first eight years of life comprise of two different education periods: first, the growth that takes place prior to school in casual learning settings, and second, the growth that takes place in the first three years of education, which is frequently considered as official education. Care arrangements for kids under the age of three are in high demand and short supply. Until recently, kids in this age group were not entitled to state finances unless they qualified for special services or were regarded to be at risk. This has been transformed by the initiation of the Childcare Tax Credit (Fox, 2007). In spite of the locally-accessible services in the field of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC), there has been no effort to: talk about or devise a national policy for the segment based on the cultural requirements as well as the nationwide climate; recognize shared understandings and opportunity of early babyhood learning and care, that is our “nation’s social construction of childhood” (Kagan, 2001); investigate the excellence of the provision of obtainable services. There has been no study on the impact of transitions brood go through from homes to centers and from centers to obligatory education or even, the consequence these situations have on children’s short and long term progress. This paper discusses the key issues in forming early childhood education and care policy since 1997 (OECD, 2000). The Ten years Childcare Strategy For us to understand the issues surrounding the 10-year childcare strategy it is important to understand how it was formed and its progress so that we can notes the weaknesses in the progress of the strategy. In December 2004, the government launched, as part of its Pre-Budget Report, a 10-year childcare strategy ‘Choice for parents, the best start for children: a ten year strategy for childcare’. The ten year policy for childcare sets out the government’s long-term vision to make sure that each child obtains the most excellent start in life as well as to offer parents with additional choice concerning how they balance work and family life. It is based on three main values: Making sure that each kid obtains the most excellent possible start in life; The need to act in response to changing patterns of employment and make sure that parents, especially mothers, can work and progress their careers; and The legitimate expectations o families that they should have authority over the decisions they make concerning the balance of work and family life. The Labor Government has long acknowledged that there are considerable public profit to be attained from assisting parents resolve the stress of work and family life. These comprise of expanding chances within and across generations, dealing with demerits as well as boosting the productive capability of the nation. However it is within this arena that we are going to review critically the challenges that may arise due to the formation of the strategy including the duration take to accomplish it by rich countries like UK (TSSA Rep’s Bulletins, 2005). Key issues in forming childcare policy Moving from provider of services to a market manager In its 10-year Childcare Strategy, the government initiated a solid commitment to uphold a mixed financial system in the childcare. As part of this, the policy summarized a new responsibility for local authorities as market managers and not donors of childcare. This has since been underpinned by the Childcare Bill. The Bill assigns a duty on local authorities to make sure that there is satisfactory childcare in the neighborhood region to meet the requirements of working parents, and especially those on low incomes as well as parents with disabled kids. Moving from being a donor of services to a market administrator needs a diverse response from local authorities. Successful market administration requires local authorities to have a sophisticated understanding of their inhabitants as well as the childcare requirements of diverse groups within that populace in addition to a comprehensive understanding of accessible provision. Dealing with gaps in stipulation demands new tools, like the capability to match demand and supply as well as the tactical support of business growth in certain parts of the subdivision to act in response to unmet demand (OECD, 2000). More criticism on the role of market management for local authorities arises due to the complication by the Government’s obligation to a state network of children’s centers and comprehensive schools offering childcare for 0 to 14 year olds. This makes the forming of the ten year childcare strategy more complicated since local authorities are projected to achieve targets for children’s centers as well as extended schools through building on accessible provision which calls for effectual harmonization with private and charitable sector providers and more significantly schools. Furthermore, local authorities may fail to deliver any considerable childcare. Dealing with this problem would require better high level dedication to childcare in local authorities as well as closer arrangement between state childcare main concerns and the performance administration system for local authorities (Bright Solutions 2006). In some places, due to market failure, there will continue to be a requirement for local authorities to offer further subsidies for childcare. For instance, in London, there is the Childcare Affordability Program run by London Development Agency. Its main objective is deal with the affordability difficulty that parents in London keep on to facing because of the added costs of care in the capital. The program is forced to offer up to £30 financial support for parents in acceptance of the childcare aspect of the Working Tax Credit. Another issue arises at the mention of the quality of education and care. A mixed economy ought to be able to make sure that children obtain the same quality of care despite the kind of provider their parents choose. This calls for a momentous upgrading of employees’ qualifications in the private and voluntary sectors. Furthermore, employers might be unwilling to become concerned with company supported childcare if they are not guaranteed that the childcare is of high eminence. The Government’s decision to no longer hold up Investors in kids might discourage employer venture in childcare (Bright Solutions 2006). There is worry that the government’s plan for schools is shifting in two diverse directions: greater autonomy on the one hand, while the extended schools curriculum relies on collaboration between various organizations. Worries have been raised concerning the sustainability of the plan along with the degree to which head teachers will have to charge for activities once start-up financial support stops, with severe consequences for insertion. Thus there are threats to sustainability of early years provision, particularly new provision. Only about half of new providers are certain that they will continue offering the provision after the start-up finances ends. Perceived risks to current provision entail high staff turnover, competition from other providers and, for a number of providers, the load of management. Most of current providers have failed to cover their costs, while a good number of providers lack sufficient understanding of their costs to judge their future viability. As much as there is significance of both flexibility and affordability, there is tension between the two objectives. It will be hard for providers to cater for different schedules without an impact on price since better flexibility means providers are not in a position of utilizing places with maximum effectiveness (Bright Solutions 2006). Providers regard lack of space as well as a need for bigger premises to be the key hindrances to expansion. The size of the labor force is as well a potential hindrance. Since 2001, labor force growth seems to below the 8 – 10 % the department approximates will be needed to meet its targets (National Audit office, 2004). Parents’ wishes The question that comes into our mind concerning the ten-year childcare strategy is: Does the main aim of guaranteeing the accessibility of childcare to allow parents to work, in addition to a specific focus on lower-income families as well as those with disabled children, form a suitable foundation for defining extent and judging satisfactoriness? The key center of attention for this response relates to the government’s fundamental objective of making sure that childcare is accessible to allow parents to work. I am worried that the state fails to recognize that the main role of children’s care rests with the family and not with the state. Describing parents as ‘informed consumers’ underestimate their responsibility as the chief carers and protectors of their kids. According to a study that was conducted by Penelope Leach in north London and Oxford that comprised of 1,200 children, it was found out that parental care in the early years has the best results for children. On the contrary, the government’s existing suggestion of the ten-year childcare strategy attaches extra worth to paid care than to parental care. This is regrettable, as well as far from perfect because it strengthens the low value positioned on voluntary job and care. Furthermore, the child-minders who are paid to care have shown that this low assessment affects them as well as their self-esteem. The government’s 10-year childcare strategy proposals are founded on the postulation that the majority of mothers wish to work outside the home and are only barred from doing so due to lack of reasonably priced, high excellence childcare. There are two issues in parents’ wishes that contradict with the government’s current proposals namely work and childcare. Work: research has shown that not all mothers wish to work full-time or even work at all. The Repeat Study of Parents’ Demand for Childcare, mentioned in the ten year strategy article, revealed that 63 % of mothers presently in service desired to work fewer hours, and 44 % of the working mothers would wish to quit work and stay at home with their kids if they may perhaps have enough money to do so. Several other studies and surveys have in a similar manner shown that the majority of working mothers would wish to spend more time at home with their children, rather than use childcare. It is merely not possible to sweep the preferences of mothers into one solitary group, as these wishes are not standardized. Catherine Hakim, in investigating women’s likings, argues that most of women are either paying attention completely on the home or are paying attention on methods to acclimatize their careers to fit their family life, leaving only 20 % who are exclusively focused on their professions. Analyses that treat women as a solitary harmonized grouping are now not likely to produce significant or valuable outcomes, given the massive and escalating heterogeneity of the female populace and the feminine labor force. Furthermore, in practice, the focus of communal and family strategy has swung so far toward the operational mother that there is now a methodical strategy bias in opposition to nonworking mothers in the majority of contemporary societies-most clearly in relation to single mothers. Childcare: We realize that the government’s suggestions place a strong importance on childcare in children’s centers and remember that the ‘Ten Years Strategy’ integrated a dedication to have incorporated early years services obtainable through kids’ centers for all under fives as well as their families (target of 3500 centers) by 2010. We also note that the proposals try to find ‘a novel influence giving constitutional rank to leadership on the children’s center deliverance form’. On the contrary, these proposals center on a structure of childcare that is not favored by parents. Employed mothers have a tendency of using informal childcare rather than formal childcare. Few employed mothers do not use any form of childcare. The proposals state a dedication to guaranteeing high excellence childcare, but we consider that the government’s description of high class childcare might vary from that of parents. The government depends on Quality Assurance systems to verify high quality childcare, but parents determine quality in a different way. The cost to the public purse The cost to taxpayer: The strategy is proposed to make £ 1.65 billion accessible to local authorities for incorporated early years services. Nevertheless, these finances cannot anticipate securing for children a corresponding standard of care to that offered by their parents at home. Dex’s research similarly argues that, when putting into consideration the childcare predilections of parents, the government’s objectives of putting into operation national, state-monitored childcare are impractical. Moreover, it is hard to foretell prior to its accomplishment how much a new strategy will end up costing when put into practice. The study of childcare, early learning as well as work by the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) comments that the charge of the tax credit plan rose noticeably over a comparatively short period and is further expected to rise even more with time. For instance, when operational tax credits and child tax credits were initiated in April 2003, the childcare tax credit was substituted by the childcare constituent of the employment tax credit. The charge of this program has amplified considerably since 1997: “it was costing about £45.6 million in1997 and around £735 million in 2003–04, and it is likely to cost around £880 million in 2004–05” (Brewer, Crawford, and Dearden, 2003; p. 13). The social costs: In addition to the financial costs, worries have as well been expressed concerning the ‘hidden costs’ of childcare. Research has shown that childcare may have a destructive consequence on a child’s bodily health, socio-emotional maturity as well as educational attainment. The development of childcare may thus contribute to boost the social harms, which would further inflict added economic burdens on the taxpayer. The continuing expenses of incurring the emotional hazards of early childcare are not simple to approximate, but the overheads of dysfunction and collapse in family relations, along with the related communal pathologies are very enormous (Cook, 1997). We support the government’s anxiety for the difficulty of lower-income families. Nevertheless, in quest of assisting lower-income families by increasing childcare provision, the government’s proposals characterize lost precedence. By proposing special evaluation of lower-income areas to minimize ‘disparities in children’s communication, and social as well as emotional growth, the government suggests that these areas pose higher social hazards to children. Nevertheless, a non-parental care environment may not help kids in encountering these hazards. In fact non-maternal care increases the hazard for insecure attachment by 66 %. Study have shown that safe attachment in babyhood is a influential factor in the growth of strong, happy, and industrious adolescents and grown-ups. Insecure connection to parents prior to the age of 10 years is a direct cause of emotional and behavioral harms in teenage years, together with youth crime. The children who are by now mainly deprived in the general public are the ones mainly at danger of being further deprived by early day care. Furthermore, day care holds the largest part of danger of uncertainty for boys and girls having a mother who is in the lowly income-to-needs percentage (Cook, 1997). The realities of Child development Daycare together with other forms of non-parental care contrasts unfavorably with parental care on a variety of procedures. Parental care offers broad-ranging benefits such as strong emotional support and safety, care founded on close understanding of the child and the personal family makeup, as well as individual venture in the kid’s growth, to kids that can not be replicated in other contexts. On the contrary, daycare positions kids at increased risk of infection, and hinders their emotional growth as well as their social progress. A number of researchers have noted that group daycare may amplify the danger of kids getting several infections such as upper respiratory and middle ear infections, pneumonia as well as gastroenteritis. Researchers also have noted that daycare might deter emotional growth, increasing a sense of insecurity in kids. Stable attachments, especially to the mother, are extremely significant to kids. Close connections to other human beings are the center about which a person’s life revolves, not only when he is a newborn or a tot or a schoolchild but all through his teenage years and his years of adulthood as well, and on into old age. Every child requires at least one particular human being to connect herself to. It is during this first love connection that she will learn concerning herself, and other people as well as the world. According to the “National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (NICHD SECC-YD) in the U.S.”, Jay Belsky also notes that day care meddles with these connections. “The NICHD-SECC found at 15 and at 36 months of age that more than just 10 hours of non-maternal care initiated in the first year of life increased the risk of insecure infant-mother attachment relationships under certain conditions (i.e., when mothers were insensitive in their mothering), and indicated further that low quality of care and more than one care giving arrangement in the first year of life also play a role in the development of insecure attachments” (Belsky, 2001 p. 854). Studies have as well shown that daycare impacts on kids’ social progress as well as ability to function socially. The NICHD Early Child Care Research Network carried out a study computing how fine children functioned publicly in the first school year, weighing against those who had practiced day care with those who had practiced family unit care. Outcomes demonstrated that the daycare children had trouble operating in public: greater hours in care foretold more teacher-perceived difficulty behavior, inferior levels of societal talents, in addition to more relational disagreement as accounted by educators. In addition, time in childcare centers separately foretold educator reports of externalizing performance. It is vital that these outcomes were acquired after controlling not only for all family factors, but for childcare value as well. We further ask ourselves why a country like UK takes that long to implement the strategy. UK is a rich country and some of these plans should not really take long durations to implement since the more time they take, the more the challenges appear, most of which had not been foreseen and thus handling them becomes a big problem. There are so many other countries that are rich but still take long periods to implement this strategy. The problem may arise when there is change of government before the strategy is completed. The incoming government may decide to change or completely do away with the plan and initiate a different strategy. This should be put into consideration when planning for such policies. Conclusion References: Bright Solutions 2006. Implementing the 10-year Childcare strategy. London, Social Market Foundation. From http://www.smf.co.uk/assets/files/publications/SMF_10-Year_childcare_strategy.pdf (accessed May 11, 2011) TSSA Rep’s Bulletins, 2005. Work and Families. From http://www.tssa.org.uk/work/pay11.pdf (accessed May 11, 2011) The Government’s “Choice for parents, the best start for children: a ten year strategy” is available at: http://www.hmtreasury.gov.uk/media/426/F1/pbr04childcare_480upd050105.pdf (accessed May 11, 2011) OECD, 2000. Early Childhood Education and Care Policy in the United Kingdom. From http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/52/32/2535034.pdf (accessed May 11, 2011) OECD, 1998. Early childhood education and care policy: Proposal for a thematic review: Major issues, analytical framework, and operating procedures. Paris: OECD. Dodge, D. 2004. Human capital, early childhood development and economic growth. In R.E. Tremblay, R. G. Barr, & RD EeV Peters (Eds.), Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development. (Online), Montreal, Quebec: Centre of Excellence for Early Childhood Development. From www.exellence-earlychildood.ca/documents/DodgeANG.pdf (accessed May 11, 2011) Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2001. Starting strong: Early childhood education and care. Paris: OECD. Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2006. Starting strong 2: Early childhood education and care. Paris: OECD. Fox J. 2007. International Perspectives on Early Years Mathematics. Queensland University of Technology, MERGA Inc. From http://www.merga.net.au/documents/symp12007.pdf (accessed May 11, 2011) Brewer, M., Crawford, C. and Dearden, L. 2003. Helping families: childcare, early education and the work-life balance, London: Institute for Fiscal Studies, Election Briefing Notes. Hakim, C. 2003, ‘A New Approach to Explaining Fertility Patterns: Preference Theory’, Population and Development Review, pp. 349-374. Dex, S. 2003. Families and work in the twenty-first century, Bristol: The Policy Press/Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Family and Work series. Cook, P. 1997, Early Child Care: Infants and Nations at Risk. Melbourne, p.158. Belsky, J. 2001, ‘Emmanuel Miller Lecture: Developmental Risks (Still) Associated with Early Child Care’, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, pp. 845-859. National Audit office, 2004. Early Years: Progress in Developing High Quality Childcare and Early Education Accessible to All. From http://www.nao.org.uk/publications/0304/early_years_progress.aspx (accessed May 11, 2011) Read More