Before and after

Explaining 'wraparound care' is difficult. It sounds kind of warm and cosy. Does it involve blankets? A tender embrace? Perhaps it's a form of therapy?

It is, in fact, a term long used by childcare practitioners to describe the 'add on' care provided before and after the hours a child spends at nursery or school. And it is now an official aim of the Department for Education and Employment to extend public provision of nursery education (part-time places for four-year-olds, and all three-year-olds by 2004) to accommodate parents who are working or training.

To test out how wraparound care could work, the Government has set up five three-year pilot projects in Kirklees, York, Cornwall, Lancashire and Ealing, London, to run until March 2003. York has perhaps the most ambitious project. Covering all 51 primary schools in the city over three years, the LEA, working closely with the local Early Years Development and Childcare Partnership (EYDCP), is planning to raise the school entry age to the term after a child's fifth birthday and create part-time nursery education places and wraparound care for children aged three and upwards. Parents will have to pay for the wraparound element at the end of the pilot. Only 19 schools have their own nursery units, so many education places will have to be created for three-year-olds.