Foreword by the Prime Minister
This Government was elected to build a modern Britain and a fair and decent society. Families are the core of our society, but they are under pressure. Women and men struggle with choices over work and family responsibilities, whether to stay at home with their children full-time or balance home responsibilities with work. The Government is pledged to support families and children. But we must do so in new ways which reflect the new challenges which they face.
We want to encourage more family friendly employment so that parents can spend more time with their children. That is why we will implement the Parental Leave Directive, giving parents the right to three month’s unpaid leave after the birth or adoption of a child.
We also want to ensure that families have access to good quality childcare. This matters to us all. To children who thrive under good quality childcare. To parents - especially mothers - who face the strain of juggling work with raising children: many are unable to take up job, education or training opportunities as a result. To businesses, who suffer when skilled and talented people are unable to take up work.
Childcare has been neglected for too long. There are dedicated childcare providers doing excellent work right across the country, from friends and family providing informal care through to childminders, playgroups and nurseries. But the quality of care can be variable, there are not enough childcare places, and ordinary working parents often cannot afford to take them up. Parents are rightly concerned about standards, qualifications and inspection regimes. Often they cannot easily find out about what childcare is available quickly enough to take up a job or training.
That is why the Government is determined to act. And it is why we have made this the first plank of our welfare reform programme set out in the Green Paper on Welfare Reform, New Ambitions for Our Country: A New Contract for Welfare.
This Government has already done a tremendous amount. To improve provision, we are making available £30 million extra in Scotland - £25 million from the Lottery to set up new out of school childcare places. From this winter every four year old will have the guarantee of a free part-time pre-school education place.
On affordability, we have introduced extra help with childcare costs by raising childcare benefit by £2.50 a week, increasing the help given in Family Credit to meet childcare costs of working families, and drawn up plans for a new childcare tax credit, part of the new Working Families Tax Credit which will replace Family Credit next year. This childcare tax credit will pay up to £70 a week for a family with one child and up to £105 a week for a family with two children to help with childcare costs.
Each of these initiatives has been warmly welcomed. People immediately see the difference they will make to them and to their children.
But now is the time to bring all these threads together into a single strategy - a Childcare Strategy for Scotland. For the first time, a government is looking at childcare in the round. What works well at present, and what does not. What kind of provision we want for the future, and how this will expand the choices for parents and improve the future prospects of our children.
All this will take place within a national framework, but will be run locally to ensure that local needs are met.
Critically, the strategy depends on a whole host of parents to work together. Now is the time to mobilise them.
I believe this is one of the most important - and most exciting - initiatives which this Government is undertaking. We want you - as parents, childcare providers, local authorities and employers - to help make it succeed.
Tony Blair
May 1998
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