When I left my first baby with a warm, loving local childminder years ago, I felt like I’d won the childcare lottery. She was the last childminder in my neighborhood - all the rest had stopped. Years later, I got the chance to set up a childminding agency to help support people to become childminders. I love hearing their stories - how this is their dream job, how it has changed their and their families’ lives, how their heart swells when the children hug them at the end of the day.
It’s also been a strange experience, though. Childminder agencies have had a lot of press recently - especially ours. For political reasons Koru Kids has been front page news this year. Behind the scenes my team and I have tried to keep our heads down and focus on supporting our childcarers and families like usual. But the truth is that we do care a lot about childcare policy, and for almost a decade we’ve been campaigning for childcare reform. So I want to clear up some confusion about childminding - because it really matters.
Childminding shot to fame in March when Jeremy Hunt unveiled increased support for childminding agencies in the Spring budget. When we heard this announcement, we were ecstatic! Finally, childminding was getting some attention.
You see, the childcare sector as a whole is in crisis. Specifically, it’s a ‘supply’ crisis - there simply isn’t enough childcare on offer. Everyone knows nurseries are struggling with low levels of government funding. But far fewer know childminders are suffering too. There’s not enough support or funding. Local Authorities used to help, but can’t any more. As a result, childminders are disappearing - there were almost 80,000 childminders in the early 2000s and fewer than 30,000 now. If we look away for too long, there won’t be any left to see.
This is a tragedy! Childminding is the most affordable form of childcare and one of the most flexible. It’s great in terms of child development and is a fantastic job if well supported. Childminder agencies are actually the only sector in childcare which is growing registrations. We do lots of things that Ofsted doesn't do, like training and support, which a lot of people need when they are turning to childminding as a career, as well as things Ofsted does, like inspections. Importantly, childminders don’t have to go with an agency - many want to stay direct with Ofsted, and they can. The government wants to encourage more childminders to get more training and support to stop them from leaving in droves - so childminders get an extra signup payment to help pay for childminder agency support. That’s what got announced in March.
However, this week we’ve made the decision to suspend our childminding support service. Our nanny business will still run - we’re not closing down! - but we won’t be helping people become childminders any more. This is because the regulations are not currently set up to support childminding agencies becoming financially sustainable. The March budget announcement didn’t make much difference to this basic fact. Childminding agencies have to do everything Ofsted does and more, but without anywhere near the funding Ofsted gets for the task. Our childminding service is a very small part of the Koru Kids business - only 87 out of thousands of childcarers - but it’s near to my heart.
Years ago we were lucky enough to meet Akshata Murthy, who understood the importance of childcare and took a chance on our business with a relatively small investment. Today she owns roughly 1% of Koru Kids. Unfortunately, this investment has also put us in the headlines for reasons that have felt like a big distraction. We want to be talking about how much help the whole sector needs. Instead, the childcare reform wins that we’ve campaigned on for years have been drowned out. At Koru Kids we’re childcare experts; we’re not experts on parliamentary procedures. We have no knowledge or insight into anything to do with declarations or parliamentary processes and have been following the news along with everyone else.
So for now we’re going to focus on our thriving and growing nanny business, and on supporting our 87 childminders to move to other providers so they don’t miss a beat in providing wonderful care to all their families and children. However, we will never stop campaigning for childminders, and will always fly our childminder flag proudly. We hope that we can bolster this part of the childcare sector again in the future.