Early Years provision has been in the headlines a lot lately and Prospect has been keen to be involved in this discussion.

The Education and Children’s Services Group of Prospect submitted written evidence to the Treasury Committee inquiry into childcare policy and its influence on the economy. The committee held a public session to listen to oral evidence from Rt Hon. Elizabeth Truss MP, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Beth Russell, Director General, Tax and Welfare, HM Treasury, and Nick Lodge, Director General, Transformation, HMRC on the 31st of January in London.

I attended the session and observed that the Treasury’s understanding of the issues is woefully lacking. Prospect have members working across the Early Years profession who feel very strongly that the 30 hours free childcare provision introduced by the Government is not sufficiently funded and is placing intolerable financial and administrative pressure on nurseries.

Members want to see Early Years provision properly funded. If the Government, as they have stated in the past, accepts employing high qualified staff is the key to tackling disadvantage why is it doing nothing to ensure nursery settings can do that?

Elizabeth Truss stated on several occasions during her evidence that she recognised the importance of good quality provision but didn’t believe the free 30 hour provision was underfunded. She believes that nurseries just need to become more efficient.

We need to get our voices heard by increasing our membership and putting pressure on Government to listen to the people on the coalface. The more members we have the more influence we can exert. If you are interested in becoming more involved in the work of the Early Years National Committee please email [email protected] or get in touch via Twitter @ProspectECSG

You can follow the link to see Prospect’s written submission. Please encourage your colleagues to join Prospect so we can influence decisions that affect your workplace. https://library.prospect.org.uk/id/2018/February/7/Prospect-submission-Treasury-Select-Committee-Inquiry-into-childcare-economy?_ts=27666

You can watch the podcast from the Treasury Committee meeting by following the link http://parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/a0b0c14e-b984-43cf-9cf9-1b0d1c0e7fda

Nursery World Show

In order to increase the members from Early Years settings Prospect manned a stall at the recent Nursery World Show in London. Helped by colleagues from the Early Years National Committee and the Group Executive Council we spoke to and collected contact details from over 400 people attending the event.

Many we spoke to admitted that they didn’t belong to a union and didn’t really think there was a union suitable for their needs. After explaining the benefits of union membership, especially in a professional where they are potentially so vulnerable we recruited several members and gained agreement to potentially visit several settings in the future to speak to staff.

I spoke to several training providers who were interested in arranging visits to speak to students and have also now visited a college delivering Early Years courses in Essex and spoken to a group of students and hopefully will follow this up with the next cohort in September. It is so important that we keep pushing the message that union membership is so important to this group of staff.

Only by increasing membership can we hope to achieve what other professional groups like teachers and nurses have; a professionally recognised, well rewarded group of staff that are highly regarded by the general public. If you have your own children in a nursery ask the management if they encourage their professional staff to join a union and if not why not? We need all our members to spread the word, not just those working in Early Years. Only by keeping up the pressure will we get politicians to listen and understand the challenges faced within this industry.