More childcare places lost as childminders quit

Becky Hiton says her anxiety is "sky high" and that she will have to leave childminding once the government's funded hours are extended

By Vanessa Clarke, Education Reporter & Daniel Wainwright, BBC Verify

BBC News

A drastic decline in childminders could lead to a shortage of places, early years providers are warning.

There were 9,800 fewer childcare workers in 2022 than in 2019, with childminders down by a fifth.

Some have told the BBC they are being forced to leave because of a lack of pay and appreciation.

Childcare places in England fell by 2% this year, but the government says the population of pre-school children is also decreasing.

Working parents of three and four-year-olds are currently eligible for 30 hours of government-funded childcare during term time. By September 2025 this will be extended to children from nine months old.

But the sector is facing severe workforce challenges.

Becky Hiton, a former teaching assistant and single mum from the Wirral, has been childminding for 10 years. She only takes on children who do not have access to government-funded hours, because she says the amount paid is too low.

Once the government is paying for all pre-school children of working parents to have 30 hours, she says she will have to leave the profession: "I'm all for helping parents, but the payments they are offering are nowhere near what I charge now, so I wouldn't make ends meet.

"My families are happy with everything I offer so it would be a shame to throw it all away, but I need to keep my household running."

In just one year, between March 2022 and 2023, registered childminders in England fell by 3,500 (11%) - meaning a loss of more than 20,000 childcare places, data from Ofsted shows.

Helen Donohoe, chief executive at the Professional Association for Childcare and Early Years, says the numbers "are absolutely falling off a cliff" and that in a decade there will be less than a thousand left, leaving parents with "a lack of choice". She says almost half of people who work in the sector are on in-work benefits.

At a weekly gathering of the Wirral Childminding Association, which was set up for rural childminders to help and support each other, some are questioning their future.

All of the childminders in Nikki Griffiths' local group are full and are being inundated with inquiries

Nikki Griffiths, who runs the group, says childminders are like "micro-nurseries" who have to follow an early years curriculum and do training in their own time, but they are sometimes not seen as professionals.

She says her local authority pays £4 an hour for three and four-year-olds, so with three children under the age of five, she earns £12 an hour before she has paid for anything else, including training, insurance, utilities and food. "We feel so undervalued."

From September, the rate the government will pay on average will increase to £5.62 per hour for three and four-year-olds and £7.95 for two-year-olds. But early-years charities says the cost of providing these places is much higher.

As well as childminders, the number of staff working for school-based nurseries and for nurseries run by voluntary organisations is falling. Private nurseries were the only type of childcare provider to be employing more staff in 2022 than they were in 2019.

The most recent figures show there are 334,000 early-years workers, down 10,000 on the peak seen in 2019.

The government says it is launching a national campaign to support the recruitment and retention of staff.

To help combat childminders leaving, it is also offering payments of £600 for those who sign up, and £1,200 for those who join through an agency.

Proposals to help providers recruit and retain staff include getting rid of the need for a maths qualification, and changing ratios.

But Neil Leitch, from the Early Years Alliance, says the plans "are unlikely to be enough to boost workforce numbers" and "risks a de-professionalisation of the workforce".

The National Day Nurseries Association says one way of plugging the gap could be allowing the sector to recruit from abroad.

Staff at the Jubilee Wood nursery are offered a 75% discount on childcare fees so they can afford to work

Zoe Raven, founder of Acorn Early Years Foundation, which is a social enterprise, would love to expand and open new nurseries but the workforce issue is stopping her.

"I can't come up with a whole new staff team", she says.

One of her nurseries in Milton Keynes, Jubilee Wood, currently makes a loss, as most of the children rely on government-funded hours. It is subsidised by nurseries in more affluent areas, which charge higher fees.

Zoe worries that when the government's expansion is fully in place, "there will be an awful lot of women who won't be able to get back to work after they have taken maternity leave".

MPs from the education committee are expected to release their report into the childcare sector later this week.

The Department for Education (DfE) says it is rolling out "the single biggest investment in childcare in England ever, set to save a working parent using 30 hours of childcare up to an average of £6,500 per year".

The DfE official adds: "To make sure there are enough places across the country, we will be investing hundreds of millions of pounds each year to increase the amounts we pay providers - and will be consulting on how we distribute funding to make sure it is fair."

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