Part of 2. 2. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Communities and Children – in the Senedd at 2:45 pm on 20 September 2017.
You’ll know—and I’m sure you’ll sigh when I raise this again—my concerns about the lack of a workforce strategy for childcare workers. We know it was in draft form three years ago, and despite promises to the contrary, we still haven’t seen a strategy in place, and I’ve registered my concerns now that that’s been rolled into the new employability programme, which doesn’t go live until 2019. But in the meantime, of course, the pilots are running and we’re all for that, and the clock is ticking in terms of rolling the scheme out fully and nationally. So, my question is: how can you be sure that without a strong workforce strategy in place that not only do you have sufficient numbers of childcare workers to be able to deliver the fully rolled out childcare offer, but also that those workers are sufficiently qualified and that they are the best childcare workers that we could possibly have?