There was a 22 per cent drop in the number of registered childminders in Scotland between 1998 and 2003, according to statistics published by the Scottish Executive last week.
The Summary Results of the 2003 Survey of Childminders, available on www.scotland.gov.uk, reveal that there are 6,211 childminders in Scotland - a significant drop since the Executive's last count of total childminder numbers in 1998.
Maggie Simpson, national development officer for the Scottish Childminding Association (SCMA), put the fall down to recent changes to the regulatory system for childcarers, which saw the Scottish Commission for the Regulation of Care take over responsibility for registering and inspecting childminders from local authorities in April 2002.
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