Childcare Bill

Everybody present is taking part in this debate because we all care about these children and their needs. There are issues about the availability of child care places in some areas, especially in relation to child protection. However, I can see the opportunities presented by the Bill and by other legislation. There will be opportunities through the development of children’s trusts to integrate services much more coherently, which I hope will help the development of exactly that sort of cross-working. Sometimes, when social services departments intervene to protect children, the families involved are exactly those for whom the local authority wants to provide child care support. So, there needs to be working across local authority departments. I see the framework of children’s trusts as an opportunity to do that as well as to involve other agencies, such as the health service, which are vital. However, will my right hon. Friend monitor what resources are available? I repeat that I recognise how much money is being put in, especially to develop children’s centres. That is very welcome. I visited Kincraig primary school in Blackpool last Friday, where I talked to people who are very much looking forward to having a children’s centre. The third area that I identified was parental involvement. It will be vital to the success of the Bill to involve parents in the development of provision. In spite of the information that is available, parents still come to me because they do not know what services they can access. The requirement on local authorities to seek out parents to tell them what services are available is welcome, but it is equally important that those parents are part of the development of services. For example, parents of children with disabilities should be included in considering how services can be improved and developed. Parents from black and minority ethnic groups should be involved. We must ensure that services are culturally appropriate and that such parents do not feel excluded. Parents in Fleetwood were involved in the development of the Sure Start project from the outset. Before a suitable building was identified and opened, the local managers talked to them about the services that they wanted. As a result, parents feel ownership of those services—they welcome them and engage with the delivery of direct child care provision and all the other support that is offered to them. Finally, I welcome the new quality and regulatory framework. My reading of clause 41 is that developmental requirements are on a par with learning requirements. However, that is a false dichotomy. The Bill creates a welcome single framework for early years education and child care instead of dealing with education on the one hand and social care and health development on the other. The two are inextricably linked—children learn through play and by observing others. Children are now examined for their developmental progress. Health visitors used to visit me to make sure that my children had reached developmental milestones as babies, so such provision is not new. As the framework is developed, however, it is important that parents understand it. Sadly, parents who read the headlines in the media may think that their six-month-old will be propped up, a book placed in front of them and a pen put in their hand. [Interruption.] I admit that I read to my children when they were little, because it is good practice to teach children from a young age to follow the reading movement from left to right so that when they learn to read they can follow sentences from left to right and identify pictures. I remember teaching my children colours and shapes and playing with them as part of the educational process. We should reassure parents that the foundation stage—the new framework—encourages them to do all that with their children. We should explain that if they place their child in a child care setting, whether with a child minder or in a nursery and so on, the trained staff will do the same.