Last week, we were thrilled to host our ‘Make Childcare Make Sense’ conference at City Hall, generously hosted by London Assembly Member Marina Ahmad. This event marked the culmination of two years of dedicated work, focused on the challenges families on low incomes in London face when trying to access affordable childcare.

Our work was driven by an urgent and growing concern—raised both within and beyond our network—that the soaring cost of childcare is a key driver of child poverty in London, rivalled only by housing costs. In response, we partnered with our network members to investigate these experiences in depth. The findings are detailed in our report, Make Childcare Make Sense for Families on Low Incomes in London, published in March 2024.

The report revealed that the current childcare system is failing families. Many funding entitlements are inaccessible due to required ‘top-ups,’ inflexible policies that don’t accommodate diverse circumstances, and a lack of inclusivity for all children. Parents deeply value childcare, but they find the system frustratingly complex and overwhelmingly expensive.

These findings align closely with other key reports published around the same time, including the London Assembly Economy Committee’s Early Years Childcare in London and Business LDN’s No Kidding: How Transforming Childcare Can Boost the Economy.

Our event last week, which was attended by a wide range of stakeholders, took stock of the situation nearly a year on. We heard powerful contributions from members of the Childcare for All campaign group about their lived experiences of childcare when you have no recourse to public funds, from Single Parents Rights Network and KIDS, who support families with disabled children to access childcare. All had clear and very pragmatic suggestions about how the system could do much better to support the groups they represent.

Rosa Schling from On the Record delivered a fascinating presentation on historical childcare campaigns, including the National Child Care Campaign of 1985, which called for “comprehensive, flexible, free, and democratically controlled childcare facilities funded by the state.” It’s striking how closely this aligns with what the parents we spoke to today still need and want.

We also heard from Sarah Ronan of the Early Education and Childcare Coalition and June O’Sullivan from LEYF, both of whom made a compelling case for an urgent policy shift. They emphasized that while the Government is making significant investments in early years education, these investments are failing to reach the most disadvantaged children. Failing to address this is an untenable position for a government that is committed to both reducing child poverty and improving early childhood development.

 

Finally, we were delighted that Joanne McCartney, Deputy Mayor for Children and Families was able to attend and address the conference; to hear directly from families, practitioners and researchers about the current challenges and we look forward to continued dialogue with her and the Mayor about what the GLA can be doing to both support the childcare sector and families and children to benefit from it.

If you couldn’t join us last week, we truly missed you—and we can confidently say you missed out too! But don’t worry—you can still be part of the conversation. Watch our campaign film, where parents dare to dream of a future where childcare is accessible to all children, free and on an equal basis: https://4in10.org.uk/make-childcare-make-sense-a-4in10-film/.