PACEY teaming up with health visitors to promote childminding
Friday, June 23, 2017
Health visitors are promoting childminders as a high-quality childcare option to parents, in a new campaign.
As part of PACEY’s Childminder Champions campaign, the Association has teamed up with the Institute of Health Visiting (IHV) to put together information about the different childcare options available and the extended entitlement coming in from September, for health visitors to share with parents.
The briefing will be published by the IHV at the end of June and sent to its thousands of members, as well as widely publicised on social media.
PACEY will also be working with health visiting teams in ten local authority areas - Nottinghamshire, Central Bedfordshire, Bracknell Forest, South Tyneside, Newcastle, Wolverhampton, Rotherham, Sheffield, Leicester City and Somerset.
Funded by the Department for Education and launched in April, Childminder Champions celebrates the work of childminders and aims to raise awareness of their role among parents, including de-bunking some of the myths held about childminding.
Under the campaign, PACEY is working in partnership with Netmums, along with a range of other parenting channels to champion them as a high-quality option for parents wanting to take-up their funded hours.
It is in reaction to PACEY’s recent Building Blocks survey in March that found nearly half of childminders surveyed said the reason they didn’t offer funded places was because no parents had asked.
Backing the campaign is Nursery World’s Childminder of the Year 2016 Rebecca Lihou, Maisie Collin of Maisie Poppins Childcare in Hackney and early years expert and PACEY president Penny Tassoni, who has created a series of videos focused around childminders and the ‘uniqueness’ of their provision.
Liz Bayram, PACEY’s chief executive, said, ‘We are delighted to be partnering with Netmums, the Institute of Health Visiting and other parent networks, to promote childminding. With 92 per cent of childminders now rated as good and outstanding in England; this unique community-based early education is ideally placed to help more families access high quality childcare, including funded hours.
'Clearly there remain funding challenges in childminders being able to deliver funded hours, but at the same time, more support is needed to integrate childminding into the delivery of funded places or we risk losing this valuable, flexible, quality choice of childcare.
'Childminding is a win-win for children, parents and employers too. Children get high quality care; parents get the flexible childcare they need to work and employers benefit from that flexibility too.’
