Former Education Adviser Sam Freedman reveals one-off payment incentive for childcare providers
16 March 2023, 12:47
Former Education Adviser Sam Freedman confirms the government have agreed to a one-off payment for childcare providers to incentivise the recruitment of childminders.
Senior Fellow at Institute for Government Sam Freedman told James O'Brien that alongside the government's new childcare budget, they have agreed to the institute's proposal of a one-off payment to incentivise recruitment of childminders.
A new childcare package announced in the Budget on Wednesday will see working families in England having access to 30 hours of free childcare per week for children aged between 9 months and 4 years old, where all adults in the household work at least 16 hours.
As well as this, the government has agreed to the Institute for Government's proposal that people who start working as childminders are set to receive £600 when they sign up.
They have take up our proposal - slightly adjusted - to incentivise the recruitment of childminders with a one off payment. This should help supply a bit but need supply reforms for nurseries too.
— Sam Freedman (@Samfr) March 15, 2023
The former Education Adviser told James: "There's no real incentive for people to go and recruit childminders, the numbers have dropped hugely. We've lost about 75,000 over the last two decades and we're down to about 25,000 now.
"No one's got any incentive to recruit anyone to do it and it's quite hard to get established... so the idea was you give a one-off payment to agencies to essentially recruit childminders and that acts as a way of getting more into the system.