The ten-year childcare strategy may have thudded on to the desks of early years and childcare practitioners as the festive season got underway. But this particular package - crammed as it is with ambitious pledges to transform the landscape of the sector - will take longer than your average Christmas fare to digest.
The broadly-welcomed proposals include an expansion of free nursery education, an apparent reorientation to concentrate on the sustainability of existing nursery places, rather than creating new ones, an acceleration of the process of integration through the children's centres programme, and workforce reform.
But significantly, two leading practitioners have said it would be necessary to 'unpick' some of the language in the strategy to establish exactly what the Government means. The devil, as the well-worn cliche goes, will be in the detail - or the lack of it.
What is not in dispute is the over-arching strategic role in implementing the plans being handed to local authorities. Rosemary Murphy, chief executive of the National Day Nurseries Association, believes that 'a lot of politics' surround this decision.
She explains, 'If the Government tries to manage things centrally, it gets told off for being a nanny state. But as soon as you make it local, people tend to scream that it should be done centrally because it's not being done properly.
'There is a worry about some local authorities that are steaming ahead and creating new places, deep into the heart of disadvantaged areas. It's either going to cost them a fortune to maintain them in these areas or the nurseries are going to go bust and they'll be closed.'
But equally she recognises that if local authorities are given greater autonomy, they may be less burdened by Government targets and be better placed to refuse to create new provision where it is not needed.
Supporting role
Anne Kearsley, Sure Start partnership manager in Leeds, says, 'We see the local authority as the key agent for co-ordinating, delivering and supporting early education and childcare services, but we will continue to do this in true partnership. We have a well-established and intelligent Early Years Development and Childcare Partnership, which is looking at how it can reshape itself, without losing all the good work that has made it the strong advisory body that it is.'
For Hertfordshire County Council, the publication of the ten-year strategy and the passing of the Children Act coincide with an evaluation of the authority's own drive to integrate services since its Children, Schools and Families service was created three years ago.
Service director John Harris says that while the strategy places great emphasis on local authorities securing a whole range of services, this can only be achieved by 'building effective partnerships, including the private sector, and putting in place the infrastructure so organisations can work together for common aims'.
The strategy announced the creation of a 125 million-a-year Transformation Fund to help local authorities fulfil a clarified and strengthened statutory duty to ensure parents get the childcare provision they need.
Rita Sutton, regional executive officer of the Pre-School Learning Alliance, is unconvinced. 'There is not enough information there to give us the assurances that we are going to be able to make provision sustainable.'
Reshaping provision
Mr Harris says that local authorities have received funds through the Change for Children programme to reshape service provision. But he believes the Transformation Fund could be used to target the planning of children's centres so that multi-agency teams can carry out the early intervention and prevention work outlined in Every Child Matters.
Hertfordshire has six children's centres, with plans for a further ten. Mr Harris welcomes the strategy's commitment to 3,500 centres by 2010 but emphasises that they must be 'well planned, and not an opportunist development'. He also believes they should be linked to a sound needs analysis and commissioning framework.
The county's flagship children's centre at St Albans has an array of health professionals on site, including a health visitor and speech and language therapists, and a childminding network co-ordinator (see box).
Janet Hicks, head of early years and childcare in Newham, says that while the strategy refers to children's centres as a 'one-stop shop', the London borough does not have the buildings to create self-contained centres. Instead, it is opting to deliver the children's centre programme in the form of outreach services, which the council feels is more appropriate to meeting local needs where people live.
Ms Kearsley says the area childcare planning forum in Leeds will be consulting with stakeholders on the next round of children's centres. She adds, 'We are also planning to talk to the private sector early in the New Year to see how they can contribute to the children's centre developments.'
However, Ms Murphy insists that there are 'major fundamental issues of viability out there which no one has even started to unpick'. She says that some private providers have felt left out of the loop from the children's centre and extended schools initiatives, while others hesitate to get involved because they fear they would only be promoting rival provision.
While the Government heralds its new childcare initiatives as an 'opportunity', many providers increasingly view them as a direct threat to their viability. As a result, Ms Murphy says, 'Day nurseries look into the future and wonder whether they see a light at the end of the tunnel or an oncoming train.'
Refocusing budgets
The strategy is candid about the failure of Government programmes and local authorities to secure the sustainability of existing childcare places. It says Government policy will 'refocus existing local authority budgets for place creation on sustainability'.
But Ms Murphy says the Government's sustainability strategy is flawed when it refuses to recognise the importance of supply side funding direct to providers and relies on increases in the childcare element of the working tax credit.
Stories of families unable to get the money to access childcare are legion while she receives e-mails from many providers who are 'losing thousands of pounds from people who do not appear at their nursery doors'.
Ms Sutton shares this concern, 'Our evidence is that take-up of tax credit is not as wide as we would want it to be.'
Ms Hicks welcomes the strategy's support for a range of pilot programmes promoted jointly by the DfES and the Greater London Authority to provide affordable childcare places across London through supply side subsidies. She says that Newham and Camden councils have been pressing for action as maximum rates of tax credits do not make childcare in the capital affordable for many families.
Funding for the ten-year strategy is likely to remain a contentious issue. While the Government promises to finance an extension of free nursery education, private providers will be mindful that some local authorities have 'top-sliced' the nursery education grant, which is no longer ring-fenced, leaving them out of pocket.
Mr Harris notes that while there were specific grants for expansion in the early stages of the childcare strategy, by 2001/02 'more and more grant was subsumed in the overall revenue support grant to local authorities and many have found difficulty in identifying where the money is'.
He says that early intervention will produce savings further down the line, but he warns, 'Local authorities, with other providers, are going to have to make judgements about the level of spend they want to put in and it will be down to local choices. Ultimately it is about priorities and making better use of available resources.'
This is all predicated, he says, on having the 'right people' and, therefore, implementing the strategy will also hinge on workforce reform. Ms Murphy identifies this as 'a big part of the programme, because the whole childcare industry depends on the staff who deliver it'.
