People Under Three

Play, work and learning in a childcare setting

Sonia Jackson, Ruth Forbes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317807070
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Early Childhood Education

Services for young children have gone through a period of rapid transformation in recent years, which have been paralleled by great advances in our knowledge of early child development. However, care and education in the first three years of life continues to be a neglected area.

Thoroughly updated to take account of key policy and practice changes in childcare provision, this landmark text translates child development theory and research into everyday practice. All the practical ideas in the book have been developed and tested in nurseries, family and children's centres and include the importance of providing opportunities for adventurous and exploratory play for babies and toddlers, understanding and responding to children's emotional needs and offering personalized and sensitive care. The book also explores different ways of working with parents and the role of early years settings and practitioners in helping to keep children safe. It includes chapters on:

• Childcare policy and services
• Planning spaces for living, learning and playing
• Babies in day care
• Heuristic play with objects
• Mealtimes
• Learning out of doors
• Leading and managing a childcare centre
• Involving and working with parents
• Safeguarding children

People Under Three is an established practical text for all those training to work with young children or managing day care facilities. Focusing on the care and learning of very young children, it is designed specifically for those who look after them day by day, as well as being a useful resource for social work students and policy makers.

1 Childcare policy and visions of childhood

DOI: 10.4324/9781315815275-1

As we noted in the introduction, the experience of early years practitioners and what they can offer to the children in their care is influenced by many different factors outside the immediate work setting. In order to provide the best possible experience for the children in their care, they need to be able to understand how their particular job fits into the overall framework of services for young children and their families.

Issues in childcare and early childhood education

From being ignored by governments over many years, childcare for young children, including in the first three years, has become a hot political issue. However, the key policy debates have remained remarkably constant over many decades (see, for example, Pugh 1993). Five main issues in early years care and education remain unresolved:

• Early childhood education has never become an integral part of the free, statutory state education system. This makes it vulnerable to local government cuts whenever there is an economic downturn, as at the time of writing.
• Pre-school education and childcare developed along separate lines, with differently qualified staff and different conditions of service which still persist.
• As a result, childcare is mainly staffed by poorly paid women with few qualifications, low levels of education and limited prospects of career progression.
• There is a tension between cost and quality in childcare which results in the children in most need receiving the lowest quality service, and leaves many families with no service at all.
• The early age of school entry compared with other European countries raises questions about the suitability of the curriculum and regime for such young children and exerts backward pressure even on childcare for under-threes.

Everyone concerned probably wants to do their best for children, but there is a clear ideological split between the government’s outlook and priorities and the ideas of those who research and write about early childhood and developmental psychology. Much of the thinking that underlies both the present and previous government’s early years policy comes from the United States and is basically driven by economic imperatives. Publicly funded or subsidised day care is seen primarily as a means of enabling mothers, especially single mothers, to work and support themselves rather than being dependent on welfare payments. The children’s day-to-day experience tends to be a secondary consideration.

The other driving force is the desire to raise the educational level of the population. International comparisons consistently show the UK hovering around the middle of the world ratings, much lower than Nordic or many Asian countries (OECD 2010). Modern economies need better educated workers and there is clear evidence that countries which invest heavily in education and skills benefit from that choice, both economically and socially (Schleicher 2006; Jackson and Cameron 2014). Moreover, educational failure is linked to all kinds of undesirable social outcomes – unemployment, ill-health, teenage pregnancy, mental disorder and, above all, crime (Simon and Owen 2006). American early intervention programmes such as Headstart and High Scope have been shown to help disadvantaged children achieve better educational progress, with effects that persist into adult life (Siraj-Blatchford 2014). However, the understanding that children’s earliest experiences profoundly affect their learning and development has been slow to penetrate the thinking of those who control educational policy in this country (Allen 2011).

Brief historical background

Early childhood policy develops within a historical, cultural and ideological framework which changes over time. Baldock et al. (2013) provide a useful timeline showing how events in the wider world interact with established welfare regimes, shorter-term political priorities, ideas about child development, high profile media events (such as the deaths of Victoria Climbié or Peter Connelly), knowledge generated by research, and economic conditions. All these elements help to shape the services offered (or not) to children and their families.

During the Second World War the government set up day nurseries to enable women with children to take the place of men away in the forces and to work in munitions factories. After the war ended in 1945 these closed quite rapidly, partly so that men could take back the jobs that the women had been doing but also because the prevailing view was that young children should be at home with their mothers. This was justified by reference to the research of John Bowlby (1953) although this was about longer separations, not day care. It was, however, very influential in the thinking of the committee chaired by Lady (Bridget) Plowden, which was set up to consider, among other things, the availability of nursery education.

The present shape of early years provision in England was set nearly fifty years ago by the report of that committee, Children and their Primary Schools (CAC 1967). This aimed to achieve a rapid expansion of pre-school education, especially in what were then called ‘deprived’ areas, by making it all part-time. That was partly to save cost but was also deliberately designed to discourage mothers of young children from working outside the home. The pattern of offering Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) on a sessional basis, bearing no relation to normal adult working hours, has persisted right down to the present, so that working parents on average incomes are usually obliged to patch together all kinds of different forms of provision in order to cover the hours of care needed, and during their earliest years children may experience a variety of settings and caregivers over the course of a week.

Despite energetic lobbying over many years by pressure groups and voluntary organisations such as the National Children’s Bureau, BAECE and the National Childminding Association (now renamed PACEY), the official view – that government should have no role in the provision of care and education away from home for children under three – was very entrenched, and there was little change in early years services until the election of a Labour government in 1997, after which it often seemed to people in the early childhood field that there was a new initiative every week (Jackson and Fawcett 2009). This resulted in improved access to early education over the next few years, often in infant schools where a fall in the child population had created empty places, filled by admitting four-year-olds to reception classes. In fact four, rather than the statutory age of five, has become the normal age of starting school in most areas (Jackson and Cameron 2014; Brooker 2002). However, the emphasis on childcare as a remedial service focused on families in difficulties or those thought to be providing unsatisfactory care for their children, which also dates back to Plowden, can be clearly seen in current government policy statements and guidance.

Different views of childhood

In other parts of Europe an alternative view of childhood prevails. In most countries children are seen as an asset to the community and this is reflected in the allocation of resources for their care. So when we hear that childcare cannot be afforded, it is very important to understand that this is a political statement, depending on the value we give to supporting family life and children’s development as opposed to, say, rescuing insolvent banks or funding military expeditions.

Britons visiting other parts of Europe are often struck by how common it is to see young children having meals in restaurants with their families, and by the way ordinary childish behaviour is met with amused tolerance instead of disapproval. Another everyday example is the ubiquity of children in Scandinavian television dramas, and their invisibility in English and American ones. Tax and welfare systems in France are designed to encourage people to have children and to provide resources to families. In Nordic countries, childcare is regarded as a matter of equal opportunities for women and a citizen right (Miller and Cameron 2014). In this country, by contrast, there has always been a fear of over-population and of giving an incentive for people to have children they cannot afford to support. It is no accident that one of the first actions of the Conservative-led government elected in 2010 was to breach the principle established in 1945 of universal family allowances (child benefit), designed to redistribute income from those without children to those bearing the cost of bringing up the next generation (Holman 2013).

Childcare policy 2007–2010

The election of a Labour government in 1997 also illustrates the impact of political change on childhood services. Almost immediately, the government took the bold step of moving responsibility for all early years services from the welfare (social services) to the education sector. The greatest significance of this move was the implicit recognition that education begins at birth and not simply at the age of entry into formal schooling.

For the first time the state recognised a responsibility for the education and care of its youngest citizens. The next few years saw many other important legislative and policy developments (Baldock et al. 2013). The regulation of day care and childminding passed to Ofsted in 2000 (which also made those services potentially eligible for public funding). In 2004 the government published a ‘Ten Year Strategy for Childcare’, given legal backing by the Children Act 2004. Two years later the Childcare Act 2006 was passed, the first law to be exclusively concerned with early years and childcare.

The intention of this Act was to bring early years within the mainstream of local authority provision, but its provisions fell far short of the universal full-time early childhood education (with extended hours of subsidised childcare if needed) available to all children aged three to six years in Nordic countries and in many other parts of Europe. Because it failed to embed pre-school education as a free universal service on the same basis as school-age education, the important reforms introduced over this period remain highly susceptible to political changes.

At present the government funds part-time pre-school/nursery places for all three- and four-year-olds in England whose parents want them (15 hours a week for 38 weeks) and this was extended to ‘vulnerable’ two-year-olds in September 2013, though only under stringent conditions. There is considerable pressure on parents to send four-year-olds to full-time school as otherwise they risk not getting a place in the primary school of their choice.

Sure Start

The largest new component of the 2004 Childcare Strategy was Sure Start, the first government programme ever to be targeted at the 0 to 3 age group. The ideas underpinning it were partly derived from the American Headstart programme, which showed very positive long-term outcomes from high-quality early childhood provision, but it was based on sound research and practice knowledge embodied in the ‘Birth to Three Matters’ framework (Abbott and Langston 2004). Sure Start was an area-based programme providing funds for a variety of different early education, childcare and family support services for children under four in the most disadvantaged areas. Every Sure Start Centre set up under the scheme had to include day care.

Sure Start is generally regarded as one of the major successes of the 2004 Childcare Strategy. Evaluation was built in from the beginning and showed small but significant improvements in outcomes for children – enhanced language development, for instance. More importantly, the Centres were greatly appreciated by the parents who used them and the communities in which they were located. In England, Sure Start projects were largely subsumed into the government’s later vision of integrated children’s services – with Children’s Centres providing early education, childcare, health services, family support and employment advice. This was such an obviously sensible idea that the Treasury allocated substantial funding for the purpose (Eisenstadt 2011). Children’s Centres spread like wildfire and might even have become universal but for the change of government in 2010. It is interesting to note that the idea of local centres of this kind available to all parents ‘within pram-pushing distance’ was first proposed forty years ago by Jack Tizard, the founder of the Thomas Coram Research Unit, in the book All Our Children (Tizard et al. 1976).

At their height there were 3,500 Children’s Centres. Cuts in public services and local authority funding since then have put the process into reverse, with over 400 Children’s Centres closing in the first two years of the coalition government and many more since. Even among those that remain open, only 500 continue to offer childcare, although Children’s Centres are encouraged to build links with high-quality early education/ childcare providers. The original vision of a Children’s Centre in every community providing the basis of a universal (as opposed to targeted) childcare service on the European model, seems to have been definitively abandoned. A House of Commons Select Committee in December 2013, while appearing to endorse the idea of Children’s Centres, commented on the confusion about their purpose and function and called for them to be reviewed and reshaped (House of Commons Education Committee 2013).

Childcare for working parents

A major weakness of all UK government policy statements on ECEC has always been the failure to differentiate between short-term sessional provision and full day care adapted to standard working hours. Both are described as childcare, although the practical implications for families are very different.

Day care

The Childcare Act 2006 obliges local authorities in England and Wales to ensure that there are sufficient childcare places to meet the needs of working parents. However, publicly provided childcare in England has almost disappeared. Care for children of working parents is found mostly in the private sector, provided either by childminders or in childcare settings run for profit, and increasingly by large commercial chains. Private childcare centres largely serve families where both parents have well-paid jobs and the fees that they charge usually put them out of reach of families on average incomes, despite the government meeting part of the cost through the childcare element of Working Tax Credit (Daycare Trust 2013). Mothers with fewer educational qualifications are much more likely to work part-time and turn to relatives, especially grandmothers, for childcare. Although grandparents, often working themselves, are increasingly unable to provide full-time day care on a regular basis, informal care by relatives is still extensively used to fill gaps in provision (Rutter and Evans 2011).

The Daycare Trust’s 2013 report on childcare costs notes that prices are rising above inflation. The cost of a nursery place for a child aged two or under is 77 per cent more than it was in 2003 while wages have remained stagnant. Low-income households spend 20 per cent of their income on childcare compared with 8 per cent on average spent by better-off families. Even that is far more than the proportion spent by families in other countries (Miller and Cameron 2014). Cost is the major restraint on expansion of childcare services.

Childminding

For children under three the most common form of out-of-home care, apart from playgroups and private day centres, i...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Figures
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Childcare policy and visions of childhood
• 2 The key person
• 3 Planning spaces for living, playing and learning
• 4 Babies in day care
• 5 The Treasure Basket
• 6 The second year of life
• 7 Heuristic play with objects
• 8 Children in their third year
• 9 Mealtimes: promoting healthy eating and enjoyment
• 10 Out of doors
• 11 Leading and managing in the early years
• 12 Building a staff team
• 13 Bridging the child's two worlds
• 14 Safeguarding children
• 15 Elinor Goldschmied 1910–2009
• Acknowledgements
• Suggestions for further reading
• References
• DVDs and videos
• Organisations concerned with young children and families
• Subject Index
• Index of names