Speaking at a conference last week about the future of the private sector, minister for children Margaret Hodge spelled out the opportunities that children's centres and extended schools could offer private providers. But delegates, particularly those involved in the Neighbourhood Nurseries Initiative, expressed fears that they will be sidelined or ignored.
The initiatives, said Ms Hodge, 'will provide challenges and a lot of opportunities, and we want you to come with us'.
However, Neil Homer, head of corporate development at Oxford, Swindon & Gloucester Co-operative Society, which has four neighbourhood nurseries, said the 'psychological shift' in policy had turned neighbourhood nurseries into 'yesterday's thing' - 'satellites rather than core service' - and he feared they would be 'killed off' by children's centres, a view echoed by other delegates.
Neil Taylor, marketing director of Wind in the Willows, which has 18 neighbourhood nurseries, said he felt that some local authorities and initiatives such as Sure Start 'are undermining what we've set up'.
Delegates called on the Government to 'revisit the sector as it stands' instead of rebuilding what is already there under new initiatives and putting existing providers out of business.
Seeking to allay such concerns, Mary Pooley, assistant director of the Sure Start Unit, explained that the 2,500 children's centres could not deliver all 43,000 planned childcare places. Remaining places would have to be created in other satellite settings, offering 'opportunities for the private providers to get involved'.
She said that local authorities with a good record on consulting with private providers would be asked to advise areas with a poor track record on partnership working.
But Laing & Buisson director William Laing concluded that while the Government had no ideological objection to private sector involvement, 'it is difficult to reconcile what the Government wants with what is happening.
There needs to be a greater degree of clarity about what the Government wants from the private sector.'
The conference, entitled 'Childcare Partners? The changing role of the private sector in delivering the national childcare strategy', was organised by Laing & Buisson.
