Nursery World - Brett Wigdortz, CEO, Tiney: 'We cannot allow the rise in remote working to become another excuse not to act on the childcare crisis'

The CEO of childminding agency Tiney says the claim by Ofsted that demand for childminder places is down because more parents are home working is an 'out of touch hunch'.

'The childminders in our community have very little trouble finding demand for their services'.

Last month’s annual Ofsted report makes for sobering reading: the number of childcare places continues to dwindle and childminders in particular are leaving the sector at a much faster rate than they are joining.

However, one line in the report stopped me in my tracks. The report suggests that this decline could be due to ‘more parents working from home, which may reduce demand for childcare places.’ It’s an explanation given without a citation for an obvious reason. Offering out of touch ‘hunches’ when the stakes are this high is frankly insulting to parents and providers.

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