A Parliamentary Inquiry into childcare for disabled
children
Consultation
Introduction
“Simply getting out of the house can be difficult. I really enjoyed my job but I can’t
imagine I’ll ever be able to go back, I’d never find the right childcare as he has
medical needs.” Parent of disabled child
Access to good quality, affordable childcare is important for all parents. Good
quality provision has a positive impact on the child’s learning outcomes and
development, particularly for the most disadvantaged children, and provides
opportunities for children to form new friendships and have fun with their peers. It
enables parents to go to work or take on more hours, and helps lift families out of
poverty.
Disabled children are at higher risk of poverty, have fewer opportunities to make
friends and to be independent, and are less likely to succeed at school. Access to
high quality childcare offers significant social and educational benefits that mitigate
these problems and creates long term benefits for families, communities and the
economy.
Parents tell us that they want to work but that finding appropriate, good quality
childcare for a disabled child can be extremely difficult, and in some cases,
impossible. These problems increase as children get older. While their non-disabled
peers attend less structured activities around the school day and during school
holidays, disabled children continue to need childcare for longer. Parents often find
that either suitable childcare provision is not available, prohibitively expensive,
inflexible or lacking in quality. Our own research supports these parents’
perceptions1.
This paper explores some of these issues in more detail and aims to provide
background for the debate about childcare for disabled children going forward.
Working Families (2012), ‘Finding flexibility: parents of disabled children and paid work’; a briefing
by EDCM supports this finding, reporting on the experience of families paying in some cases between
£12 to £14 per hour. In addition, DfE research from (2011) highlights cases of families paying up to
£20 per hour. EDCM (2010) ‘Breaking down barriers: making work pay for parents of disabled
children’ Huskinson, Tom, Kostadintcheva, Katya et al (January 2014), Childcare and early years
survey of parents 2012-2013, Department for Education; it is important to keep in mind that this
survey covers informal and formal childcare arrangements.
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The facts
Fact 1: There are around 700,000 disabled children in England.
Fact 2: Just over 350,000 children receive Disability Living Allowance (DLA).
Fact 3: 66% of parents paid more for childcare for a disabled child than their
non-disabled child.
Fact 4: Families report paying up to £20 per hour for childcare for a disabled
child.
Fact 5: Families with a disabled child are 2.5 times more likely to have no
parent working for more than 16 hours per week.
Fact 6: Only 39% of parents of disabled children agreed that providers could
cater for their child’s condition in their area.
Fact 7: Only 28% of local authorities in England say they have enough childcare
for disabled children.
Fact 1: DWP (2004), Fact 2, ONS statistics (2014), Fact 3: EDCM (2010), Fact 4: DfE (2011), Fact 5:
Emerson, E and Hatton, C. (2005), Fact 6: DfE (January 2014), Fact 7: Family and Childcare Trust
(2014)
Why look at childcare for disabled children now?
The time to look at childcare for disabled children is now.
Childcare as an issue has risen up the political agenda and is likely to feature in
forthcoming legislation, the political debate leading up to the election as well as in
political parties’ manifestos. So far, disabled children, their families and their
specific needs and requirements have been largely absent from this debate.
Aiming High for disabled children and the disabled children’s access to childcare (DCATCH) programme both clearly had a positive impact on the families that
benefited from it from 2008 – 2011, but the programme has not had a sustainable,
national effect resulting in improved childcare provision for disabled children across
England.
Last but not least, there have been a number of changes in the policy and funding
environment since 2010, for example around how parents are financially supported
with childcare costs under Universal Credit. We don’t know what the impact of
these changes will be on the provision of childcare for disabled children, but it is
vital that they are factored into any proposals going forward.
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What do we know about the barriers to good quality, affordable childcare
for disabled children?
Despite the massive increase in childcare places over the past 15 years, for families
with disabled children and young people, childcare is a significant and consistent
problem – wherever they live in the UK. In fact, when Contact a Family asked
parents if it is more difficult to find childcare for a disabled child than a child who is
not disabled 94% agreed.
The most recent Childcare and Early Years Survey of Parents showed that parents
with disabled children have serious problems finding suitable childcare. The survey
notes that two in five (40%) parents believed there were childcare providers in
their local area that could cater for their child’s illness or disability whilst around a
third (35%) of parents said that providers were available at times to fit around their
other daily commitments. Slightly fewer (29%) found it easy to find out about
providers that could cater for their child’s disability.2
There are a number of barriers for families with disabled children accessing
childcare provision. These can broadly be split into four categories:
a) Higher cost - parents are often asked to pay a premium to cover additional
support costs
b) Availability and flexibility - particularly in the school holidays and for older
children
c) Quality - not appropriate to the children’s needs
d) Access – a lack of choice and/or rationed where available
Parent also struggle with childcare because:
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
they lack information on where to find it, or assume childcare won’t be
accessible to them

they lack confidence in leaving their child with someone else or assume staff
won’t have the necessary skills, particularly if their child has medical needs

they cannot find someone willing to look after their child

transport arrangements are inflexible to their needs
Childcare and early years survey of parents 2012-14 (2014), Department for Education, p. 140
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Cost
Parents of disabled children regularly pay more for childcare for a disabled child
than a non-disabled child3, making childcare provision for many parents
unattainable.
Even where parents get support via tax credits (or in future through Universal
Credit), the financial support provided is unlikely to cover the extra costs for
childcare for a disabled child – and therefore pay for less hours – as there is a
maximum of financial support per week available. This in turn has implications on
these parents’ ability to seek work.
‘I cannot work because I am a single mum with a profoundly disabled son. I
would love to be able to go to work but cannot afford the £12-£14 per hour care
for my son - especially in school holidays'
Extending Inclusion (2008)
Stobbs (2008)
This issue is further compounded for children with higher support needs for whom
for example 1 to 1 support is required, or where families have more than one
disabled child when the costs become prohibitively expensive4.
Questions
1. Why is childcare for a disabled child often more expensive and what can be
done to reduce the costs of providing childcare for this group of children?
2. To what extent does the current system of support with childcare costs help
parents with disabled children to meet the additional costs of childcare?
3. If there was to be financial support to meet the additional costs of providing
childcare for disabled children, how could this be most effectively delivered?
What do you think are the pros and cons of offering extra support either
directly to parents or the providers, or via local authorities?
Availability and inclusion
Local authorities themselves do not believe that they have enough childcare
provision for disabled children, with only 28% in 20145 reporting that they have
sufficient childcare for this group. Parents’ experiences echo these assessments.
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4
5
EDCM (2010), Working Families (2012), DCATCH (2012)
DCATCH
Family and Childcare Trust, Annual Cost Survey 2014
4
There are a number of reasons for this problem but the central issue is the limited
number of providers willing and able to support disabled children.
One parent encountered extremes of welcome and rejection. On investigating one
provision, she was told, ‘Your son is too disabled to come here.’ In another
provision that she investigated, her son was welcomed warmly, but, on returning
to join the agreed activity, it was apparent that no thought had been given as to
how her son might be supported. The mother found this as unsatisfactory as the
provision that rejected her son immediately. In both instances, she felt that a
relatively brief discussion would have been all that was required to determine
what support her son might need and how he might have been included.
Extending Inclusion (2008)
Stobbs (2008)
Questions
4. What are the barriers to extending access to suitable childcare for disabled
children and what can be done to address them?
Do you agree that families with disabled children and young people
experience fewer early years and childcare options compared to other
families? If so, why is this and what can be done to address this?
-
Are the reasons the same/different for older disabled children (eg
14 plus)
-
Are they the same/different for disabled children from BME
communities?
-
Are they the same/different for disabled children living in rural
areas
-
Are they the same/ different for children with complex
health/medical needs?
5. What are the different challenges in extending access for disabled children
for:

pre-school childcare providers;

wraparound school or holiday childcare providers;

providers of childcare for older children;and

others, i.e. children’s centres?
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6. What is the role the following bodies or organisations should play in
improving the availability of childcare for disabled children and what is
needed to enable them to fulfil this role?

National and devolved government

Local authorities and their health partners

Early years providers, including childminders

Schools (mainstream and special)
7. What can be done to ensure that inclusive childcare becomes the norm for
disabled children going into the future?
Quality
Parents often express concerns related to the quality of provision and these
concerns make them uncomfortable leaving their child to be looked after by
someone else6. Concerns relate to how well their child is included in activities
provided, how well staff are trained to support disabled children and how well they
can support their child’s learning.
Attitudes to inclusion are far from where one would expect them to be in 2014. In
fact, as seen in the case study above, many clearly still consider the provision for
disabled children to be the remit of specialist provision alone. A lack of
appropriately trained staff, and therefore a lack of knowledge about the needs of
disabled children, is also a key barrier to offering inclusive and appropriate
provision.
These concerns are not the concerns of parents alone. The Nutbrown review7 clearly
highlighted shortcomings about the quality of provision in early year’s settings in
particular. While quality is an issue that she argues affects all children, disabled
children, who need additional support are particularly vulnerable to provision that
does not support their development.
Stobbs P (2008) Extending Inclusion: Access for disabled children and young people to extended
schools and children’s centres: a development manual. Council for Disabled Children
7
Nutbrown, Cathy (2012) Foundations for Quality, Department for Education
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Questions
8. What are the reasons childcare offered for disabled children can be lacking in
quality and what do you think needs to be done to improve this?
9. Are there particular groups of disabled children who are better or less well
served by current childcare provision?
10. To what extent is the childcare workforce equipped to provide high quality
care for disabled children? What role do the following people/ organisations
have in improving the standard of childcare for disabled children?

National and devolved government

Local authorities

Early years providers, including childminders and individual staff

Schools

Ofsted
Access
A lack of choice and/or rationed provision often characterise childcare provision for
disabled children. Eg some disabled children cannot access their full 15 hours free
entitlement. This is closely related to poor provision of relevant information to
parents and therefore their ability to negotiate what support is required. This issue
was picked up as an issue by the DCATCH programme and as result, work was put
into improving the information provision to parents, and to support them in the
negotiations about their child’s support needs.
Question
11.What more do you think needs to be done to improve the information
provision to ensure that families are aware of the provision available in their
area?
What has changed in childcare?
Over the last year, the issue of childcare has risen high up on the political agenda.
As a result of this, the Government has and is in the process of introducing a
number of changes to the way childcare in the UK works and is financed.
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Universal Credit and childcare support
Under the new Universal Credit rules, all working parents will be able to have 85%
of their childcare costs paid for, up to a maximum of £175 for one child and £300
for two children. Parents do not have to work 16 hours minimum to receive this
support. In addition to that it is currently proposed that from 2016, those earning
enough to pay tax will have 85% of their childcare costs covered going into the
future. Analysis by organisations such as Citizens Advice has shown that this
approach benefits parents who work full-time, but not those who earn near the
minimum wage or work less than full-time hours.8 The system does not
acknowledge the potential additional costs that families with disabled children may
face.
The 2-year old offer
From September 2014, the 40% most disadvantaged 2-year olds will be eligible for
15 hours of free early-years education – extended from the 20% of the most
disadvantaged children. For a child to be eligible the parents will have to meet a
number of income criteria, for example be in receipt of income based Job Seekers
Allowance. In addition to that, children in receipt of DLA or those with a statement
or Education, Health and Care Plan will also be entitled to the free offer. The offer is
likely to benefit a number of children and families beyond the 1% it is anticipated
will benefit from it as a result of their child being in receipt of DLA or a statement,
due to the correlation between poverty levels and having a disabled child.9
Tax-free childcare and early years pupil premium
In August 2013 the Government consulted on their proposal to replace Childcare
Vouchers with a new system of tax-free childcare. The government has now
announced that it will provide 20 per cent of working families childcare costs up to
£2,000 each year. This is equivalent to basic rate tax relief of childcare costs up to
£10,000 a year.
The new system will be phased in from autumn 2015, following legislation being
laid. From the first year of operation, all children up to age 12 – and disabled
children under the age of 17 – will be eligible. Families where both parents are in
work (or a single parent is in work) will be eligible for tax-free childcare and they
must not receive Universal Credit. It is proposed that where one member of a
couple is in work, and the other is either a full time carer in receipt of Carer’s
Citizens Advice Bureau (August 2013) Childcare costs in Universal Credit
EDCM/ SEC (2012) Extending Free Early Education to More Two Year Olds: A response from the
Special Educational Consortium and the Every Disabled Child Matters campaign,
http://www.edcm.org.uk/campaigns-and-policy/consultations/consultation-on-extending-free-earlyeducation-to-more-two-year-olds
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Allowance, or in receipt of Employment and Support Allowance, the couple will be
eligible for Tax-Free Childcare.10
Legislation providing the statutory framework for the scheme is expected at the
Queens Speech.
In the context of the tax-free childcare announcements, the Government also
announced that they would allocate £50 million to an early years pupil premium.
The details of this will be consulted on in due course.
Children and Families Act 2014
The Act introduces also a number of changes to the way information will be
provided to parents about what services are available locally. From September
2014, local authorities in England will be required to publish a ‘local offer’. A local
offer is intended to provide information about provision it expects to be available to
children with special educational needs (SEN) and disabilities in their area including
leisure activities and childcare. In addition, the Act also removes the duty on local
authorities to carry out childcare sufficiency assessments every three years, and
replaces it with a power to do this.
Integrated review
The ‘integrated review’ at 2 -2 ½ is a joint initiative between the Department for
Education and the Department of Health, which aims to improve ‘early
identification’ of any health or disabilities a child may have. It brings together the
Healthy Child Programme review at 2 to 2 ½ and the Early Years progress check at
age 2 and will be implemented from 2015. The integrated review will aim to:



identify the child’s progress, strengths and needs at this age in order to
promote positive outcomes in health and wellbeing, learning and
development
facilitate appropriate intervention and support for children and their families,
where progress is less than expected
generate information which can be used to plan services and contribute to
the reduction of inequalities in children’s outcomes.
The integrated review is an important opportunity because evidence suggests
additional needs and disabilities are most commonly identified once children reach
school. 357,420 children receive one form or another of Disability Living
Allowance11 but the number of children receiving DLA rises sharply over the age of
HM Treasury, HM Revenue and Customs (August 2012) Tax-free childcare: consultation on design
and operation
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5 from 49,920 to 150,680. There is then again a large drop-off at the age of 16,
with numbers reducing back to just over 50,000.
More great childcare
In 2013, the Government introduced a number of changes to the qualifications
system for early year’s providers. Two new qualifications were introduced:

Early years teacher status (level 6)

Early years educator (level 3)
As part of the changes to the qualifications systems, the Government outlined a
number of standards that Early Years Teachers (EYT) would have to meet. Standard
5.3 requires that EYTs ‘demonstrate a clear understanding of the needs of all
children, including those with special educational needs and disabilities, and be able
to use and evaluate distinctive approaches to engage and support them’12. The
standards the Early Years Educator – which is makes no mention of disabled
children.
What more needs to be done?
A number of the proposed changes are welcome steps. The 2-year old offer, for
example, will undoubtedly support some of the parents currently struggling to
access childcare, and the local offer should give parents greater access to
information.
But, the question is whether these changes will address the barriers that disabled
children and their families face in accessing to good quality, affordable childcare in
the future – and if not, what else needs to be done?
The Parliamentary Inquiry into childcare for disabled children will explore these
questions further and set out some possible solutions.
Consultation
The Parliamentary Inquiry on childcare for disabled children now seeks the views of
interested organisations and parents as to what they believe would improve the
childcare offer for disabled children. We are looking for written evidence in the first
instance.
12
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/early-years-teachers-standards
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The consultation will be open until 9 June 2014, 12pm. Please send your
response of no more than 2000 words to childcarefordisabledchildren@edcm.org.uk
using the subject line ‘Inquiry into childcare for disabled children’.
Summary of questions
Affordability
1. Why is childcare for a disabled child often more expensive and what can be
done to reduce the costs of providing childcare for this group of children?
2. To what extent does the current system of support with childcare costs help
parents with disabled children to meet the additional costs of childcare?
3. If there was to be financial support to meet the additional costs of providing
childcare for disabled children, how could this be most effectively delivered?
What do you think are the pros and cons of offering extra support either
directly to parents or the providers, or via local authorities?
Availability and inclusion
4. What are the barriers to extending access to suitable childcare for disabled
children and what can be done to address them?
Do you agree that families with disabled children and young people
experience fewer early years and childcare options compared to other
families? If so, why is this and what can be done to address this?
-
Are the reasons the same/different for older disabled children (eg
14 plus)
-
Are they the same/different for disabled children from BME
communities?
-
Are they the same/different for disabled children living in rural
areas
-
Are they the same/ different for children with complex
health/medical needs?
5. What are the different challenges in extending access for disabled children for:

pre-school childcare providers;

wraparound school or holiday childcare providers;

providers of childcare for older children;and
11

others, i.e. children’s centres?
6. What is the role the following bodies or organisations should play in improving
the availability of childcare for disabled children and what is needed to enable
them to fulfil this role?

National and devolved government

Local authorities and their health partners

Early years providers, including childminders

Schools (mainstream and special)
7. What can be done to ensure that inclusive childcare becomes the norm for
disabled children going into the future?
Quality
8. What are the reasons childcare offered for disabled children can be lacking in
quality and what do you think needs to be done to improve this?
9. Are there particular groups of disabled children who are better or less well
served by current childcare provision?
10. To what extent is the childcare workforce equipped to provide high quality care
for disabled children? What role do the following people/ organisations have in
improving the standard of childcare for disabled children?

National and devolved government

Local authorities

Early years providers, including childminders and individual staff

Schools (mainstream and special)

Ofsted
Access
11.What more do you think needs to be done to improve the information provision
to ensure that families are aware of the provision available in their area?
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