Providing flexible childcare is the aim of the Working For Families Fund, an initiative set up by the Scottish Executive. And a large part of this flexibility is the extension of sitter services, which have been available in Scotland for 20 years.
Sitter services involve children being looked after in their own home by a childcarer and are the answer to hundreds of parents' prayers, often providing childcare where there is no alternative. More than 30 services are now running throughout Scotland, and parents are charged according to their income and can claim tax credits towards the costs.
Instead of the childcarer's home being vetted it is the family home that is checked to ensure that it is safe for children to be looked after there. A similar system, the Home Carer Service, ran for a time in England but was not successful.
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