Julie Morgan AS/MS

Y Dirprwy Weinidog Gwasanaethau Cymdeithasol

Deputy Minister for Social Services

& Jack Sargeant MS

Chair - Petitions committee

30.01.2023

Cyf/Ref P-06-1303 Ein cyf/Our ref JMSS/01015/22

I would like to thank the Minister for her further correspondence regarding the petition which lists the actions that are currently in place.

However the petition is drawing attention to the complete inadequacy of the current situation and the response from the Minister includes nothing that addresses the points made in the petition.

Many families I am aware of both personally and through my job managing a Family Centre, youth provision and other community projects, cannot take up work or other activiites that would benefit them personally and financially because of the absence of childcare.

I used to work for Clybiau Plant Cymru Kids# Clubs as the local Ceredigion Development and Training Officer and I can confirm that there is less childcare now in Ceredigion than when I left that post in 2007 – less children’s nurseries, less after school clubs and less holiday playschemes. 

The Ministers response does not include any information as to what can be done in the short and long term to ensure sufficient affordable accessible childcare across Wales.

There needs to be actions around:

· Funding for childcare settings both for start up and running costs

· Funding for families so they can afford to use childcare

· A faster and more flexible registration process – for example it can take 12 months from a childminder expressing interest to becoming registered – how many people can wait that long to start earning money?

· A provider of out of school childcare ie after school care and holiday care must register separately for every premises when registration can take many months, and if they move premises they have to start a new registration (where I work now we provide open access play on parks and playgrounds, and we had to de-register and reduce our session to under 2 hours because we were required to submit a new application for every park or play area – what we need is one registration  application that ‘licenses’ a provider for more than one venue)

There are many actions Welsh Government could be taking to improve the current situation but it needs a radical rethink of the current piecemeal approach and there is nothing in the response from the Minister that provides any indication of how she intends to address the disturbing lack of access for families across Wales, keeping children and families in poverty, and limiting the opportunities for often mainly women to access work, training and education.

It is disappointing to see such a lack of ambition as expressed in her response to improve the lives of families across Wales.   

With regards

Gill Byrne