Parent-led childcare is not for profit childcare designed and co-delivered by parents, for parents.
How does it work?
Parent-led childcare puts local parents at the helm of organising and delivering a local childcare service to help make sure families’ childcare needs are met and help keep childcare costs low. From planning out what the childcare service will look like to sitting on the management board and recruiting early years professionals, parents play a key role in creating a service that works for their neighbourhood. Parents can also get involved in the day to day tasks of delivering childcare to help keep running costs low like working alongside early years professionals with children, helping out with preparing food, tidying up, providing some admin support and organising fundraising.
Why parent-led childcare?
Parent-led childcare has the potential to help parents access high quality childcare that supports them to work and boosts their children’s learning, particularly in areas where parents are underserved by the childcare system.
Parent-led childcare forms a large part of childcare systems in countries like Canada and New Zealand. We teamed up with the New Economics Foundation to find out whether parent-led childcare can work for the benefit of families in the UK.
Research phase
For six months, we gathered feedback from parents and professionals about parent-led childcare and crunched the numbers on how it could actually work. We also looked at the handful of childcare settings being successfully led by parents in the UK to see whether they could be expanded.
The answers from this feasibility study are promising: there is a strong appetite for this type of childcare and the operating model we have developed can work in various settings.
We have created a business planning and financial modelling tool that can be used by groups of parents and other local stakeholders to adapt our parent-led childcare model to work for their communities. The model can be adapted by the number of childcare hours delivered, the number of weeks operated per year, the number of children attending and the qualification levels of staff employed. This means that parent-led childcare can be tailored to make sure it genuinely works for local parents and their children.
Many of the low income parents we spoke to saw increased involvement in the childcare their children receive as a major benefit, with financial savings a secondary issue. We know that parents sometimes struggle to trust childcare services. Parent-led childcare brings parents into the heart of childcare services which can help parents to see first hand the benefits of childcare for their children and learn about early education and home learning.
First parent-led nursery – launched
Following consultation with local residents, the focus for the nursery is on families, creativity and the outdoors, and local families co-produced furniture and playground equipment. A group of parents volunteered to be Directors (trustees) and the nursery is now a registered charity (constituted as a CIO).
We have been working with the Directors to set the financial model, including the fees – ensuring that this provides the flexibility and affordability that local families have requested, whilst enabling the nursery to run sustainably. For example, the nursery will be open 50 weeks of the year, but families will have the option to request childcare in term-time only, or for all 50 weeks. Opportunities for parents to volunteer in the nursery are also encouraged.
We continue to look for other opportunities to learn about similar settings to support others aiming to set up parent-led childcare out over the coming years.
BBC World Hacks
Coram Family and Childcare, New Economics Foundation and parents from Scallywags – a London based parent-led childcare setting – spoke with BBC World Hacks about the benefits of parent-led childcare.
Listen to radio interview Watch BBC articleBBC Radio 4 Women's Hour feature
BBC Radio 4’s Women’s Hour invited Megan Jarvie from the Family and Childcare Trust and Lucie Stephens from New Economics Foundation to talk about parent-led childcare.
Listen on YouTubeThe One Show
The One Show spoke with Megan Jarvie, our Head of Policy and Communications, and visited Scallywags Nursery in Tower Hamlets to watch parent-led childcare in action.
Watch on BBC iPlayerNursery World
Nursery World explores the potential of parent-led childcare with the Family and Childcare Trust and New Economics Foundation.
Read on Nursery World websiteThe parent-led childcare programme was delivered in partnership with