Provision and use of preschool childcare in Britain

Families benefit from childcare. The availability of affordable childcare is a major influence on women's ability to take up paid work. According to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, 'Helping families to combine work and care is an essential step in achieving equality by enabling better access to the labour market for women'. Good quality childcare also improves children's long-term intellectual and social development.
A feature of good quality childcare is the level of qualification of the childcare staff. In 2011 the government published a major strategic document, Supporting Families in the Foundation Years, which renewed the government's commitment to the fundamental importance of the early years and contained recognition of the value of good qualifications for this workforce. This report focused on formal childcare provision, including provision by nurseries, playgroups or childminders. However, the majority of childcare is provided not in formal settings, but is provided informally by friends and relatives, especially by grandparents. Until recently, very little was known about this informal care, but two major reports published in 2011, from the Daycare Trust and Grandparents Plus, drew attention to the major role played by grandparents. With greater longevity, these grandparents may be looking after young children at the same time as caring for their own elderly parents. They form a 'pivot generation', with caring responsibilities for the young and the old.

Little research has so far been conducted which brings together the needs of parents, of the formal childcare workforce and of informal carers. This study will address this gap by combining information about the users (parents) and the providers of childcare, both formal and informal. It will do this through a secondary analysis of a number of large-scale, national quantitative datasets. The aim of this research is to inform understandings of the future shape of childcare provision and usage in Britain.

We will investigate the coverage and characteristics of childcare usage and provision and the childcare workforce (formal and informal) through a secondary analysis of large-scale national quantitative data, including the Labour Force Survey, the Family Resources Survey, Childcare and Early Years Providers Survey, and Childcare and Early Years Survey of Parents.

To examine the use of childcare, this research will identify those parents using childcare, both formal and informal, for their preschool children. It will examine what combinations of childcare parents are using. We shall relate the use of childcare to the demographic characteristics of the parents: these would include social class measures and income, and - perhaps most importantly - the employment status of the mother. We will compare these demographic characteristics with families that have preschool children, but are not making use of childcare.

To examine formal childcare provision, we will use the Standard Occupational Classification to identify people who are currently employed in the childcare workforce. We will examine their demographic characteristics, including gender, age, ethnicity and whether they have children of their own.

Some of the datasets include questions about providing childcare informally, rather than as a job. These data will be used to identify those who are providing informal childcare. We will describe their demographic characteristics, and identify whether they are also providing care to anyone else.

The National Day Nursery Association (representing providers) and the Daycare Trust (representing parents) have agreed to collaborate. They will contribute their own perspectives to the design of the research, and will also help develop dissemination materials that will ensure the research findings are relevant for members of their organisations and to wider non-academic audiences.

Key non-academic beneficiaries include policy makers from a range of government departments (e.g. the DH, DfE, DWP), early years' practitioners and childcare charities, such as the Daycare Trust and the National Day Nursery Association (NDNA). We have agreed collaboration from the NDNA and the Daycare Trust and will work directly with them to achieve a wide breadth of communication of the research findings. To ensure the research maximizes its impact, Claire Schofield, Director of Membership, Policy and Communications at the NDNA, has agreed to draw out the key implications of the research for NDNA's members (which will be posted for free on their website) and a summary of key policy messages to circulate to policy makers. The former summary will be the basis of a presentation we have been invited to give to the NDNA annual conference. Additionally, Jill Rutter, Policy and Research Officer at the Daycare Trust, will assist us with developing a summary for parents.

We have agreed input from a variety of key stakeholders: Claire Schofield, at the NDNA, Valerie Christian, at the DWP, Neil Leitch from the Pre-School Learning Alliance, Sarah Wellard from Grandparents Plus, Celia Hannon at the Family and Parenting Institute and Professor Dick Wiggins, Director of Methodology in the Centre for Longitudinal Studies at the Institute of Education. They will be involved in the research through a stakeholder/advisory group. Communication with this group will begin within the first month or so of the start of the project, in order that the groups' views of the research can be incorporated into the planning of the research. The group will then meet two-thirds of the way through the research, when the substantive part of the analysis has been completed, and then towards the end of the research, when the key findings have been written up. This will enable the group to discuss and evaluate the research findings at the key stages.

The medium to long term impact of the research will be to provide policy makers and practitioners with a picture of how childcare usage and provision has changed over time. This will help inform understandings of the future shape and nature of childcare provision in the UK. It will also help inform policies concerned with children's general well-being. Additionally, the findings will illuminate the characteristics of people working formally and informally in the early years' workforce, which will help inform where to target recruitment drives.

These impact outcomes of will be achieved through the planned communication and dissemination activities, such as presentations to the annual British Educational Research Conference (BERA), the European Early Childhood Research Association (EECRA) annual conference and NDNA annual conference for early years' providers. Also, through publishing in practitioner journals / magazines, such as 'Nursery World' - the UK's leading professional journal for early years' professionals working in community settings. Summaries of the key research findings will be produced collaboratively with NDNA and disseminated to the organisations centrally concerned with the early years' workforce and childcare usage and provision. In order to ensure that the findings leave a legacy, it is anticipated that dissemination will continue beyond the timeline for this research. Part of this will be to seek to present our findings to the 'All-Party Parliamentary Group on Childcare'.