In 2000, there was only one service in Scotland providing registered care for children in their own homes. Now there are 33.
Home-based services make childcare available for parents outside the hours of normal local provision. They operate seven days a week, from early morning to late evening, and plug the childcare gap for parents working shifts or at weekends.
OPFS hailed home-based childcare and sitter services as 'a unique and successful Scottish initiative'. National development manager Ann McKenzie said home-based services had been able to flourish in Scotland because of recent changes in the registration system for childcare.
She said, 'The Care Commission requires all services that provide childcare workers to register as childcare agencies. The agencies are regularly inspected by the Commission but the individual workers do not have to go through an approval scheme themselves. It is a very different situation to England, where Ofsted requires individual childcare workers to be approved.'
OPFS runs five home-based services across Scotland under the name Childcare@Home. Since Childcare@Home Dundee opened six years ago, more than 300 families have used the service and almost 100,000 hours of childcare have been provided.
Ms McKenzie said, 'Childcare@Home opens up a flexibility which has previously only been available for people who could afford their own nanny.'
Attempts to provide similar services in England have been less successful. A spokeswoman for the DfES said, 'The take-up of England's Home Carer Scheme, which was launched in April 2004, was fairly low - just over 220 people. It was replaced by the Childcare Approval Scheme in April this year.'
