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Magazine /

New funding announced to improve access to childcare and after school clubs

Posted 04.05.23 by Alice Hinds

childcare childcare expansion out of school care School

Scotland’s most disadvantaged communities will soon benefit from additional funding for after school and holiday clubs, the Scottish Government has announced.

Local authorities are now able to apply for a share of £4.5 million to support and improve indoor and outdoor spaces within school estates, with education settings encouraged to consider the wider needs of their local community after the first year.

Announced at a national anti-poverty summit in Edinburgh, the fund is open to all local authorities, however, applicants will need to demonstrate how they have worked in partnership with school age childcare and activities providers, outline ambitious ideas, and define how projects will benefit children and families, particularly those from low-income areas.

Managed and administered by Scottish Futures Trust, the funding is targeted at families on the lowest incomes, specifically the six priority family types identified in the Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan – lone parent families, minority ethnic families, families with a disabled adult or child, families with a mother under 25, families with a child under one, and larger families.

First Minister, Humza Yousaf said: “Helping families deal with cost of living pressures is one of our key priorities and providing further funding for affordable and accessible school age childcare will help deliver that. Funded school age childcare supports parents and carers into work and enables them to support their families, while also providing a nurturing environment for children to take part in a wide range of activities.”

With all three- and four-year-olds and eligible two-year-olds currently entitled to 1,140 hours of funded early learning and childcare per year, the First Minister said Scotland has the “most generous childcare offer anywhere in the UK”, and developing a funded early learning and childcare offer for one and two-year-olds will be a key focus over the next three years.

Identifying tackling poverty and inequality as the biggest challenge facing Scotland today, he also said “nothing will be off the table” to help households struggling with the cost of living, and with input from campaigners, businesses, third sector organisations, local government, and those with direct experience of hardship, the summit will “drive new momentum in the fight against poverty in Scotland”.

Related content

Access to childcare services ‘has strengthened relationships and wellbeing for children and parents’, new report finds

29 Sep 2022

Media Release

Projects across Scotland supported by the Access to Childcare Fund (ACF) have made a difference to families’ lives, bolstering children and parents’ health, relationships and financial security.

That’s the key finding of the final report into phase one of the ACF, which also reveals that access to childcare opened up new work opportunities and reduced costs for many participating families.

Funded school age childcare provided through the projects offered a safe, supportive place for children to come together and, while families may have experienced difficult times through the pandemic, children were able to have fun, make new friends, get outdoors and play.

Click here to read the report

The Scottish Government’s Access to Childcare Fund was designed to increase access to childcare for those families most at risk of experiencing child poverty.

Between October 2021 and March 2022, the Fund invested more than £2 million into 15 projects across Scotland. National charity Children in Scotland managed the fund on the Scottish Government’s behalf.

A short film about the Fund and projects it supported has been produced (click the link on this page to watch the film).

The final report into the Fund provides an overview of its impact and shares learning from funded projects. Its key findings and recommendations include:

  • Funding must be targeted at subsidising childcare costs so families on low incomes are no longer locked out of services
  • Childcare services must have longer funding periods to enable them to develop, plan, deliver and evaluate their approaches
  • As specialist services for children with additional support needs are particularly expensive because of the greater number of skilled staff required, additional funding must be available across Scotland to ensure children with ASN get equal access to school-aged childcare
  • Support for targeted and specialist childcare providers must be given to help all families access these services. Targeted services for minority ethnic families, for example, help to foster inclusion
  • Evidence from projects should be explored to show how incorporating whole family support into services from early years to school age can increase the uptake of places and may enable progression from poverty
  • Childcare should be recognised as an important part of the wider children’s services landscape, and childcare providers should be included in children’s services planning processes
  • Transport must be viewed as part of a holistic childcare offer. Transport provision can help families overcome childcare barriers including cost, lack of transport options, and parents/carers work or study commitments.

Welcoming publication of the report, Children in Scotland’s Head of Policy, Projects and Participation Amy Woodhouse said:

“The Access to Childcare Fund experience has taught us many valuable lessons, including the importance of relationships, the complexity of poverty, and the fact that childcare does not exist in a vacuum but is deeply connected to other basic needs in families and communities.

“Children and young people have had a lot of valuable things to say about their experiences of the childcare provided through the Fund. A recommendation of the report is that childcare providers should consider how they incorporate children’s views into service design, delivery and evaluation. We are hopeful that Scotland’s move towards incorporating the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child will provide further impetus for this.”

Access to Childcare Fund Lead Alison Hay said:

“Although funded projects had to operate in the most challenging of circumstances, the Fund has shown that our vision for childcare as a service that nurtures the child and the wider family, exists as part of a wider community, and is responsive to individual needs, is possible and achievable.”

Children’s Minister Clare Haughey said:

“This report shows that almost 1500 children from 1000 low income families were supported through the Access to Childcare Fund (ACF) between October 2021 and March 2022.

"The Scottish Government is committed to building a system of school age childcare, where the least well-off families pay nothing. This evaluation of the ACF will help our understanding of what families need as we take our next steps.

"I would like to thank Children in Scotland, the projects, and the families involved, who provided valuable input for this report.”

More than 1479 children from 1000 families were supported through the Fund. It supported projects to test out new approaches to childcare, including expanding services through providing free and subsidised places; increasing the hours and days of operation; and increasing the types of services on offer.

In the context of a challenging winter, the cost of living crisis, and evidence of how projects supported by the Fund reacted to rapidly changing circumstances, it is hoped that the report’s learning and recommendations can be widely shared.

(ends)

Media contact: Chris Small, Communications Manager - Children in Scotland, csmall@childreninscotland.org.uk.

Notes for editors

About the Access to Childcare Fund

The Scottish Government’s £3 million Access to Childcare Fund (ACF) was opened in July 2020. The purpose of the Fund was to support childcare solutions that enable more accessible and affordable childcare for families with school-aged children and to help to reduce the barriers parents and carers can experience in accessing childcare. These barriers include the cost of childcare, the hours available, and accessibility for children with additional support needs. The awards aimed to make services more accessible and affordable for low-income families, particularly the six identified priority family groups most at risk from living in poverty and as set out in the Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan.

The Fund was managed by Children in Scotland, with strategic input from an expert steering group. Both evaluation and improvement were at the heart of the Access to Childcare Fund and Evaluation Support Scotland (ESS) has provided significant input and support to services throughout. A mentoring and peer network also operated across the projects. The fund was launched shortly after the Covid-19 pandemic took hold in Scotland, and in the context of a number of national lockdowns and ongoing restrictions.

The funded services were:

  • Action for Children, Moray
  • Clyde Gateway, South Lanarkshire
  • Flexible Childcare Service Scotland, Aberdeenshire
  • Flexible Childcare Service Scotland, Dundee
  • FUSE, Glasgow
  • Hame Fae Hame, Shetland
  • Hope Amplified, South Lanarkshire
  • Indigo Childcare Ltd, Glasgow
  • Inverclyde Council
  • Low Income Families Together (LIFT), Muirhouse, Edinburgh
  • Supporting Help and Integration in Perthshire (SHIP), Perth & Kinross
  • St Mirin’s Out of School Care, Glasgow
  • Stepping Stones for Families, Glasgow
  • SupERkids, East Renfrewshire
  • The Wee Childcare Company, Angus.

Click here for more information about the Fund:
childreninscotland.org.uk/acf-fund/

About Children in Scotland

Giving all children in Scotland an equal chance to flourish is at the heart of everything we do.

By bringing together a network of people working with and for children, alongside children and young people themselves, we offer a broad, balanced and independent voice. We create solutions, provide support and develop positive change across all areas affecting children in Scotland.

We do this by listening, gathering evidence, and applying and sharing our learning, while always working to uphold children’s rights. Our range of knowledge and expertise means we can provide trusted support on issues as diverse as the people we work with and the varied lives of children and families in Scotland.

ACF Final Phase One Evaluation Report

Our report into the Access to Childcare Fund identifies successes and shares learning

Click here to read

Enabling childcare that's more accessible

The Fund supports childcare solutions and helps reduce barriers facing parents/carers

Visit the website

2021-26 Manifesto

Our Manifesto includes key calls on poverty and improving access to childcare

Click here for more

Our projects

Our range of projects focus on young people's voices and participation

Click here for more
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A black and white headshot of a man wearing a suit jacket, shirt, tie and glasses

Magazine /

Comment: Childminding suffering from an expansion programme that doesn't recognise its value

Posted 26 November, 2021 by Jennifer Drummond

childcare childminding Early years ELC out of school care

Implementation of the Scottish Government’s extension to funded childcare hours is failing childminding and threatens parental choice, writes Graeme McAlister (pictured), Chief Executive of the Scottish Childminding Association

In 2016 the Scottish Government published an ambitious blueprint to increase the entitlement to free Early Learning and Childcare (known as ‘funded ELC’) from 600 hours to 1140 hours for all three- and four-year-olds and eligible two-year-olds in Scotland from August 2020.

Since then, a huge amount of activity has been undertaken across the country at a national and local level to implement this important policy aimed at closing the attainment gap, increasing parental choice and providing more flexible childcare.

The intention is welcome, but the Scottish Childminding Association’s (SCMA) latest report, charting the progress of Scotland’s local authorities in including childminders in the delivery of funded ELC makes stark, challenging and uncomfortable reading.

We do not underestimate the scale and complexity of implementing the expansion of ELC; nor do we underestimate the unprecedented nature of the pandemic and the disruption which this has caused. However, the reality for childminding is that many of the problems which childminding has faced with ELC expansion were deeply embedded before Covid-19 emerged and have not been adequately addressed.

While some progress has been made in increasing the numbers of childminders involved in delivering funded ELC, the numbers remain low. The founding principle of provider neutrality, or the ability for parents to choose to access their funded ELC from a range of childcare providers supported by the local authority who are authorising the funding is not working as it should.

There is clear evidence that childminding is not being promoted and offered equitably alongside local authority nursery provision as an option for parents to receive their entitlement of funded hours. Too many offers for funded ELC made by local authorities to parents are inflexible. Many childminders believe delivering funded hours is important to sustainability, but there is often a weak match between offers made by local authorities to parents and childminders’ business viability.

In addition, delivering funded hours, and the wider ELC expansion, has led to a significant increase in bureaucracy and paperwork for childminders, including through duplicative quality assurance systems at a national and local level. This is now the main reason childminders have left or plan to leave our workforce.

Encouragingly, the results of snapshot surveys of childminders and parents linked to the main audit would suggest that the majority of parents are receiving their first choice of childcare provider. However, this needs to be qualified with concern about the lack of choice and options available locally, with more than half of parents reporting they only received a single option for accessing their funded ELC within the offer from their local authority. As such, preferences could clearly differ if parents were presented with more options and the ability to make an informed choice.

In response to these findings of the audit, SCMA has made a number of detailed recommendations to Scottish Government including:

  • Provider Neutrality should be replaced; alternatively, the Scottish Government and local authority representative bodies need to step up and step in and ensure that Provider Neutrality is actually practised, and that local authorities promote and offer other forms of childcare including childminding, alongside local authority nursery provision, to parents as an option for accessing their funded ELC entitlement.
  • All funded ELC offers need to become more flexible and based on parental need.
  • Urgent, and immediate, action is required by Scottish Government to reduce the level of bureaucracy and paperwork for childminders associated with ELC expansion.
  • Scottish Government should undertake an urgent review of the wider scrutiny landscape BEFORE any additional scrutiny is added through Education Reform, the National Care Service and the Programme for Government’s commitments on one year-olds and school-aged childcare.
  • Scottish Government should provide financial support to extend the planned, demographically-targeted childminder recruitment campaign, initially in development for remote and rural areas;
  • Eligible-twos uptake must be urgently increased by implementing measures to increase the use of childminders for this priority group.

After five years of national and local implementation activity delivering funded ELC, the childminding workforce has declined by 26%, or 1457 childminders. This has accelerated in parallel to ELC expansion. This cannot be sustained and has significant implications for families, access to childcare and parental choice.

It could also threaten the Scottish Government’s ability to deliver on its commitments in the Programme for Government (click here to access) to extend ELC downwards to one-year-olds and to develop a new system of wraparound school-aged childcare – both areas in which childminders are heavily involved and will play a vital role.

A step change in action is now required – and urgently.

The SCMA published the Early Learning and Childcare Audit on Thursday 25 November.

Click here to view and download the report in full, via the SCMA website

Related content

“Children don’t need shorter holidays or longer school days. They need more play”

1 April 2021

Margaret McLelland, manager of St Mirin’s Out of School Club –  a recipient of funding from Children in Scotland’s Access to Childcare Fund – explains why play is so fundamental to childhood and learning. This article was originally published by Inspiring Scotland as one of their practitioner guides resources

There has never been a more crucial time for play not only in Scotland but across the world. A global pandemic has deprived children of so many play experiences. Media are covering the “gap” and “loss” of learning and how Scotland might address the impact of “lost learning”.

Our children don’t need more school, reduced holidays, extended educational days. They need more play! Mental health and wellbeing are a priority for our children. This needs to be intact before children even begin the process of learning and what better way to do this than through play?

As manager of an out of school club based in a primary school we have been engaging with the school long before the pandemic. We now recognise there is even more additionality we could offer and bring to the school. As play practitioners and professionals we are highly trained, and our skills and expertise have the potential to enhance the whole school community.

It starts with relationships, from there we build mutual respect between the teaching staff and the play professionals. This has certainly raised the profile and understanding of play by highlighting what can be achieved through play. By this I mean play indoors and especially outdoors, play guided by the playwork principles, play in both its forms of structured and unstructured, play that is spontaneous, self-directed and assists children to meet their own needs, play that involves risk, compromise, negotiation , trust, choice, collaboration and empowerment for children. The teaching staff have an understanding of play to an extent but their educational understanding of play at times does not lend itself to play in the biological sense.

Our play journey

So, we are embarking on a journey to incorporate more play in the school day not only for lower primary years but the whole school. Our initial aim was to enthuse school management that play is a perfect vehicle in which learning unfolds and unravels. Play is the universal language of childhood and enabling playful environments for children provides them with a plethora of opportunities to develop their imagination and curiosity. The physical benefits of play are well known. Play (particularly outdoor play) increases wellbeing, increasing oxygen levels, heart rates, activity levels and obesity but the mental health benefits and development of soft skills enhanced by play are much less well known and understood. As an out of school service, we hoped we might highlight this in the school we operate within.

How to bring more play to your school

We approached our head teacher about the possibility of bringing more play to the school day. Our initial discussions enabled us to recognise the educational drivers, but we were able to introduce how play could provide an excellent platform for learning in a more autonomous way. Together we discussed how we might introduce play and it may have the potential to enhance learning experiences and outcomes for children. Finally, we agreed what was to become a plan! There has been challenges, but we are taking tentative steps towards a more playful school. One such challenge is addressing the view that play is frivolous, it’s what children get to do as a reward or its “messing around”. The complexity of play can mean it can be some of that but professional observations of play can unravel exactly what is being achieved and learned by children even in the “messing around” stages of play.

Our initial attempts at bringing play to the school day were very positive. We started by introducing play professionals to the playground. Children were naturally drawn to these playful adults and engaged almost immediately in active play. To us this was a great introductory starting point not only for the children but for the teaching staff on duty in the playground. We recognised immediately this was play however we realised our intervention style was leading and our preferred state is to be observing and leaving the content and intent of play to the children. But it was a starting point. Even though our team were involved in play our skilled observations told us which children were demonstrating leadership whist others were content to follow. It was also noticed which children were at ease in play whilst others required adult play cues to get involved. The challenge for play professionals was being very aware we were not staying true to our play principles.

However, we promptly agreed this was an excellent stating point on which to build trust with children. So, we viewed this stage as an introduction to play in its simplest form. Our other school involvement was to explore health and wellbeing in playful experiences. This was a one-hour sessions, 5 days per week for small groups of children (max 8) We used play to help children recognise feelings and emotions. Again, this is a more structured type of play but a very worthwhile pilot in which we learned there is most certainly a need for playing more therapeutically with children. Throughout the weeks we introduced the concept of play to the school we were receiving excellent feedback from the school staff team. We engaged in numerous meetings with the head teacher and we laid out our initial plans to bring more play to the school day. We advised the head teacher that this, to us, was a starting point as true play not peppered by outcomes would still achieve and benefit children.

Even in this early stage of our pilot we were able to highlight some children who may need some support to further engage and this finding was echoed by the school as some children were receiving educational support. This highlighted that play can be used to assist children with social and communicative skills which in our play world are as important as academic success.

The challenges and successes

Then COVID and lockdown stopped all of us in our tracks. Since March 2020 we have been unable to further our journey with this. Even being back briefly the restrictions made it impossible to mix certain groups and social distancing meant the whole school physical space and environment prevented us moving forward. The second lockdown came rapidly after the first and today (February 2021) we are hopeful we will be returning to school 15th March. The fantastic news is that St Mirin’s Out of School club has been successful in a major funding bid to the Access to Childcare Fund.

Our application included funding even more play into the school day. We commenced a breakfast and play club which is receiving excellent feedback from families. This funding will also enable us to increase our time working within the school day enabling more play and playing therapeutically to gain best outcomes for our school community. We will also be operating two nights per week 6pm-8pm with our “Simply Play” model. This will very much be guided by our playwork principles of self-directed play.

Our journey has only just begun, and it is new territory for school and out of school to collaborate and work in partnership in such a way. It has had its challenges but for the most part early indications are that this joined-up approach of play and learning can be one of the same thing. Learning through play in all its forms is in my opinion the best method for some children to learn.

Strengthening access and affordability

The Fund provides grants focusing on priority groups most at risk from poverty

Find out more

The value of outdoors play-based learning

Inspiring Scotland originally published Margaret's blog in their practitioner guide series

Find out more

Manifesto for School Age Childcare

The Scottish Out of School Care Network has published a series of calls

Read more

Families need services that are 'here to stay'

The final report of our CHANGE project sets out how to improve local childcare

Find out more

Shetland childcare setting scoops prize

Hame Fae Hame Shetland, funded by the Access to Childcare Fund, has won a major award

Find out more

Hope in hard times

Our Manifesto for 2021-26 includes key calls on childcare and the value of play

Find out more

Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan

The Access to Childcare fund addresses one of the actions highlighted in Every Child, Every Chance

Find out more

All local services providing childcare or play for children and young people need to be ‘here to stay’: funded on a long-term, secure basis, major four-year project finds

4 February 2021

MEDIA RELEASE

The final report of a major Scottish childcare project makes a series of calls about how to improve childcare in local communities and through changes to national policy.

CHANGE (Childcare and Nurture, Glasgow East) was set up in 2016 to create a sustainable childcare model with family and community involvement at its core.

Work on the project involved gathering the views of children, parents and local services; setting up a Hub to strengthen local collaboration and challenge childcare barriers identified by families; championing community initiatives and the need for more universal family support; and supporting ‘crisis’ childcare and food provision.

Following four years of work, the project’s final report, ‘It’s our future’: Childcare in Glasgow East, makes a series of recommendations about how to improve childcare, including:

  • All local services that provide childcare or play for children and young people need to be ‘here to stay’: funded on a long-term, secure basis
  • The number of available childminders should be increased so that families have more choice about how and when their child is looked after
  • Out of School Care services must be treated as a core service for it to be sustainable. This should include considering school and community buildings as everyone’s spaces
  • More opportunities for families to play and learn together must be made available, with all food-related work funded to be part of the mainstream offer
  • Parents and carers need childcare to enable them to attend emergency appointments and access public services
  • Families need to be able to access information about childcare that is easy to find and understand. The childcare and family support available must be made easier to navigate for both families and practitioners.

CHANGE found in its project work that local people frequently expressed fatigue about previous interventions that have not improved their lives, and that local staff dealing with stretched resources were often exhausted.

CHANGE staff were also conscious of how issues of class and poverty associated with the project area have been consistently framed in negative terms.

The report calls for the many positive aspects of life in the East End of Glasgow to be celebrated and better understood.

Sally Cavers, Children in Scotland’s Head of Inclusion and CHANGE project lead, said:

“The CHANGE project has sought to address fundamental problems about childcare including fragmented provision, cost, and the need for real community ownership and empowerment. We hope that this report captures the complexity and challenge these issues have presented – but also how much commitment, positivity and expertise communities in Glasgow’s East End possess in answering these problems.

“In terms of improving childcare for families, we need to be focused on the qualities of kindness and dedication we found in the community, and recognise that locally and nationally, we are making progress in improving access to affordable quality childcare.

“However, culture change and real transformation is still required for local services, and huge societal pressures exist for families and services, even more so following a pandemic that represented one of the biggest challenges for generations.”

“As we state in the report, it is our hope that the essence of Glasgow’s East End, combined with effective local and national policy drivers and the possibility of post-pandemic transformation, will result in local community childcare and support services that can thrive.”

The CHANGE project follows work and key recommendations by the Commission for Childcare Reform, which published its findings in 2015.

Click here to download the report

Click here to watch the short animated film and hear community voices on what needs to change

Media contact:

Chris Small, csmall@childreninscotland.org.uk

Further information:

Click here to read more about the CHANGE project
Click here to find out more about Children in Scotland

We Know What We Need

Watch a short animation and hear community voices on what needs to change

Click to watch the film

CHANGE project: final report

Read ‘It’s our future’: Childcare in Glasgow East

Click to download the report

CHANGE project: aims and background

Find out more about the project's ambitions, remit and achievements

Click to read more

CHANGE project: views and expertise

Read blogs about CHANGE, including comment from Senior Project Officer Robert Doyle

Click to read more

CHANGE project: partners

Partnership working has been key to CHANGE's approach

Click to find out more

Hope in hard times

Proposals for early years policy development drawing on the work of CHANGE feature in our 2021-26 Manifesto

Click to find out more

Commission for Childcare Reform

The CHANGE project was informed by some of the Commission's key findings

Click to find out more

Organisations from Shetland to Shettleston announced as successful applicants to Access to Childcare Fund

11 September 2020

Fifteen childcare providers from across Scotland have been announced as the successful applicants to the Access to Childcare Fund.

The fund, launched in July, is one feature of the Scottish Government’s Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan which focuses on tackling and reducing levels of child poverty in Scotland.

It recognises that the cost and availability of school age childcare round about the school day and during the holidays is often prohibitive for low income families and can limit opportunities for parents to work, train and learn.

The Fund aims to make childcare more accessible and affordable, particularly for children and families most affected by low incomes – unlocking improvements for both parents and their children.

The organisations will be supported by a total of £3 million by March 2022, and have committed to testing a range of approaches to increasing the availability and accessibility of their services and working together to share their learning across the range of children’s services.

The successful applicant organisations include Action for Children, which will be operating in Elgin; Flexible Childcare Services Scotland, offering provision in Dundee (Fintry) and Fraserburgh; Hame fae Hame Shetland; Inverclyde Council; Edinburgh’s Muirhouse Millennium Centre; SHIP, in Perth; and Wee Childcare, which is based in Angus (Kirriemuir).

In the Glasgow area, Stepping Stones (Possilpark); Indigo Childcare (Castlemilk); St Mirin’s Out of School Club; and Hope Amplified, which serves African families in the city, have all been successful.

Clyde Gateway’s provision, based in South Lanarkshire, and supERkids (East Renfrewshire), will also be receiving funds.

Communities Secretary Aileen Campbell said:

“I’m pleased that we are supporting these innovative projects to make childcare more accessible and affordable for low income families.

“School age childcare is critical to enabling parents to enter and progress in employment, education or training – helping to increase household incomes.

“However, it is equally important for children themselves, with high quality childcare offering further opportunities to grow, learn and play. These projects, and the models they establish, will help shape the future of school age childcare in Scotland and progress our ambitions to eradicate child poverty.”

Children in Scotland CEO Jackie Brock said:

“The successful applicants to the Fund demonstrate the depth, quality and innovation of childcare provision across Scotland in 2020. These organisations have all seized the opportunity to test and adapt their services for the benefit of the children and families in their communities.

“Most importantly, the childcare provision that will be backed by this funding has a strong focus on supporting families who are often the most excluded from the benefit of high quality out of school and holiday services. This needs to change and the learning from the Fund could contribute to every child benefitting from such services.”

The successful organisations are:

Action for Children

Clyde Gateway

Flexible Childcare Services Scotland (funded in two locations)

Fuse Youth Café Shettleston

Hame fae Hame Shetland

Hope Amplified

The Indigo Childcare Group

Inverclyde Council

Muirhouse Millennium Centre

St Mirin's Out Of School Club

SHIP Perth

Stepping Stones for Families

supERkids

The Wee Childcare Company

The Access to Childcare Fund is funded by the Scottish Government and managed by Children in Scotland.

(ends)

Media contact:

Chris Small, csmall@childreninscotland.org.uk 


Notes for editors 

Click here to read our news release about the launch of the fund

About Children in Scotland

Giving all children in Scotland an equal chance to flourish is at the heart of everything we do.

By bringing together a network of people working with and for children, alongside children and young people themselves, we offer a broad, balanced and independent voice. We create solutions, provide support and develop positive change across all areas affecting children in Scotland.

We do this by listening, gathering evidence, and applying and sharing our learning, while always working to uphold children’s rights. Our range of knowledge and expertise means we can provide trusted support on issues as diverse as the people we work with and the varied lives of children and families in Scotland.

For more information, click here to visit www.childreninscotland.org.uk

Unlocking routes to affordable childcare

Launched in July, the fund is a key feature of the Child Poverty Deliver Plan

Click to find out more

Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan

The new fund addresses one of the actions highlighted in Every Child, Every Chance

Click to find out more

Out of School Care

The fund complements the Scottish Government’s draft Out of School Framework

Click to find out more

"Another generation can't go through this"

Earlier this year we commented on new child poverty statistics

Click to find out more

CHANGE

Our CHANGE project is working to develop a new and sustainable model for childcare in the East of Glasgow

Click to find out more

New fund will strengthen access to out of school and holiday childcare for low-income families

6 July 2020

A new fund launched today aims to make childcare more accessible and affordable, particularly for low income families.

The Access to Childcare Fund will provide grants to establish models of delivery of out of school care, with a focus on priority family groups most at risk from living in poverty.

The Fund is funded by the Scottish Government and managed by the national charity Children in Scotland.

In the first funding round a total of £1.5 million pounds will be allocated between successful applicants.

Children in Scotland’s Chief Executive Jackie Brock said:

“We are very pleased to be managing such an important fund in alignment with our shared ambitions to reduce child poverty and challenge inequalities.

“For decades we’ve known about the barriers faced by families trying to access childcare, and the impact this can have on wellbeing.

“Out of school and holiday care are areas of critical vulnerability and concern, and that’s where this fund will rightly be targeting its support.

“I hope that this initiative will make a genuine contribution by helping those families who are experiencing insecurity, stress, and financial difficulty – particularly in the current climate.”

The Fund addresses one of the 15 actions highlighted in the Scottish Government’s Child Poverty Delivery Plan Every Child, Every Chance (click here to read) – to deliver new support for childcare after school and in the holidays to help low income parents reduce childcare costs, work more flexibly and increase their incomes.

Funding has been allocated from the Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Fund, and a further funding round will be available in the 2021-22 financial year.

The fund complements the Scottish Government’s draft Out of School Framework.

The deadline for applications is 5pm on Monday 27 July.

Click here for further information about the Access to Childcare Fund

Click here to apply

Access to Childcare Fund: key information

Find out how to apply, deadlines, and all the other details about the fund

Click here to read more

Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan

The new fund addresses one of the actions highlighted in Every Child, Every Chance

Click here to find out more

It's Your Business to Tackle Child Poverty

For our 25 Calls campaign, John McKendrick argued this must be a priority for all of us

Click here to read more