Examination of witness (Questions 54 -
59)
TUESDAY 6 FEBRUARY 2001
GILL HAYNES
Chairman: We now welcome Gill Haynes, of the
National Childminding Association. Janet Dean.
Mrs Dean
54. Thank you, Chairman. Good morning. I wonder
whether, first of all, you could tell us how rigorous the process
is that childminders have to go through at the moment to become
a registered childminder and begin to look after children?
(Ms Haynes) I am very pleased to have
the opportunity to put on record the process that registered childminders
have to go through in order to become registered, because it is
very rigorous. First of all, they and every member of their household
over 16, in England, and in some parts of Wales over 11, have
to undergo a police check. They also have to have a health check,
they have to have personal referees, their home is checked, and
they have to undergo a very intensive interview with an experienced
registration and inspection officer from their local authority,
who makes an assessment, against the background of all that evidence,
as to whether or not they are "fit", which is the language
of the Children Act, to undertake looking after young children.
55. And who pays for the criminal record check
at the moment?
(Ms Haynes) At the moment, the costs of criminal record
checks are borne by local government and the police.
56. Thank you. Is there currently a problem
with unregistered childminders advertising their services?
(Ms Haynes) There is a problem with unregistered childminders,
and I think it is a big failure of society, at the moment, that
we do not actually tell parents loudly enough just how important
it is to be using registered childcare. I have recently moved
back to London, after over 20 years living in Sussex, and the
very first thing I saw on the notice-boards of supermarkets, bring
and buy, and sales, and what have you, were notices from people
offering their services as childminders, with no indication at
all of whether or not they were registered. And, of course, the
other, important point about a registered childminder is that
they are required by all local authorities in England to have
a public liability insurance policy, which means that there is
a level of protection for themselves, the children that they care
for and the parents of the children that they care for, when they
undertake that activity. And perhaps it is worth saying that,
even with the rapid growth of day nurseries in this country, over
the last five years, in particular, registered childminders are
still providing the majority of full-time day care for children
in England and Wales, and they are particularly vital for the
care of very young children, in two-parent working families, where
perhaps the hours that are being worked are not as family-friendly
as publicity might have us believe that all our lives were.
57. Do you have any fears that if a charge was
made for police clearance more childminders would not seek registration
but would be unregistered childminders?
(Ms Haynes) Yes, I have a serious concern that this
will be the outcome; and it is not something that is a concern
of my own, it is something which is shared widely by all those
people who register, currently register, as childminders, throughout
the country. Sadly, many of them are not aware that the Criminal
Records Bureau is coming into operation in August, and nor are
they aware that childminders are, currently, it appears, likely
to be charged for those police checks. And when I spoke at a very
big conference last week, concerned with the transition of the
regulatory services from local authorities to Ofsted, which is
due to take place on 1 September, I would say, 95 per cent of
the audience were not aware that this was happening, and when
I alerted them to the fact that it was, quite frankly, their response
was one of complete horror.
58. One could say that childminders receive
an income, it is slightly different from the volunteers that we
have recently been discussing; what evidence have you got that
they would not pay out £10 to seek registration?
(Ms Haynes) I think the first thing that I would want
to put a question-mark over is whether or not these enhanced record
police checks are going to be £10. In the 1993 Green Paper,
the enhanced record check was set at £17.83. I do not see
much other evidence in the world today that something that cost
that in 1993 is going to cost half of it today; and so I would
really want to be pressing very hard for a definitive figure to
be placed on exactly what the cost of the enhanced record check
was going to be. Then there is, of course, the cost of registering
bodies; my organisation is a membership organisation and national
charity, and people become members of our Association once they
have been registered as childminders. So I presume that somebody
else will be the registering body, i.e. Ofsted, and so there is
that issue there. I would say that the point in question is the
fact that it is not simply the childminder themselves, it is every
member of their family. So we are a volunteer organisation as
well, and we have got about a thousand local groups, who meet
to support childminders in local areas. And in Solihull, and I
am sure they will not mind me quoting them, they had a coffee
morning, one day last week, and there were 31 childminders there;
and you may be interested to know, of those 31 childminders, 14
would require two checks, i.e. they had two people over themselves
and their partner, 12 would require three, two would require four,
two would require five and one childminder would be looking at
six. Now the average weekly earnings, net, of a registered childminder
in the UK today, in England and Wales, and I regret to have to
report this, is £106 a week. Now it seems to me that if one
looks, and I do not mean to be offensive here in any way, but
if one were to compare the weekly net earnings of a childminder
with the weekly net earnings of a Member of Parliament and suggest
that in order to do your job you had to pay between £500
and £800 to start off with, as the basic wherewithal, and
then possibly pay for your partner and your child who was over
16 as well, people might throw up their hands with horror. But
that is actually what we are asking people to do. As I already
submitted to you, in my memorandum, there are still parts of this
country where childminders are receiving £1 per hour, per
child, for the children that they are looking after, this is in
very rural areas, very disadvantaged areas, but, nevertheless,
it is happening. The Working Families Tax Credit is not touching
the areas of deprivation where people are not in work. And so
I think we really need to look closely at what the real impact
of this measure will be, and, as I say, I have very, very serious
concerns about it.
Mrs Dean: Thank you very much.
Mr Howarth
59. Chairman, I hope that you will allow me
to put Mrs Haynes straight on the expenditure that is necessarily
incurred by Members of Parliament, just in case those watching
our proceedings may be misled. The number of raffle prizes that
Members of Parliament have to give, the number of functions we
have to attend, out of our own pockets, I can assure Mrs Haynes,
are very substantial and should not go without being placed on
the record. However, having made that clear, can I say that I
think it is very helpful, Mrs Haynes, to have given the average
weekly earnings, because I thought Mrs Dean's question was entirely
right, that we are dealing with different people from those we
have just been discussing, in terms of the volunteers. But can
you also set the record straight for us, when you say that childminders
pay an initial registration fee and an annual inspection fee,
how much is involved in those?
(Ms Haynes) At the moment, they are set at £12
and £10 respectively; so those initial outgoings are low,
and they have been kept deliberately low by local authorities
in the past because they have not wanted to discourage people
coming forward for registration. However, in the last ten years,
since the Children Act came into force, and the Children Act has
had a tremendous effect in actually raising the standards of childcare
and the safety of children who are looked after by people outside
their own home, nevertheless, standards, quite rightly, have been
ratcheted upwards and the costs of becoming a registered childminder
have gone up considerably. Our organisation has been very successful
in persuading the Government that, in order to attract people
into this area of childcare, at a time of such a booming economy,
perhaps there needed to be some incentive, and start-up grants
have been made available to childminders in England. And it is
the case, with some imagination, that I can foresee childminder
start-up grants covering perhaps the initial costs of a criminal
record check, if we go down the route of having to pay for them.
My concern, however, is with the 85,000 existing registered childminders,
and, on average, I would say, the fact that they probably will
need to pay for between two and three police checks themselves,
when the childminders move over to Ofsted on 1 September, because,
at this point, all those childminders will need to reregister
with Ofsted. And it is at this point that I envisage a huge falling
out of people who already feel that they are being marginalised,
in many ways, bearing the hidden costs of some of the ways in
which the Working Families Tax Credit is not working, and feeling
that these additional costs, perhaps of £40 or £50 per
household, are just too heavy for them to bear at the moment.
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