Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:49 pm on 17 April 2018.
Thank you, Jenny. A couple of things in response: first of all, in terms of getting this offer to the people who most need it because, curiously, even though it's focused on working parents, there's almost a universality to it as well, in that we're saying that all working parents should, but we know that there are some working parents who would benefit from this more, and how do we get the information to them? How do we persuade them that it's easily accessible? Well, alongside the early implementation options, we've also been developing—sorry, everything nowadays is a hashtag, but it's actually a hashtag scheme—#TalkChildcare. So, part of the engagement we've been doing, I was mentioning, with the hundreds of thousands of parents, both within the scheme and in other areas, is to try and make it simple to understand what this offers, and we've heard some interesting things. So, such as, you know, I'm from the south Wales Valleys and south Wales Valleys people do tend to, perhaps, disproportionately rely on relatives. So, when you say, 'We've got an offer here with Government-supported, Government-backed childcare', they say, 'Well, I've got my free childcare already sorted, thank you very much.' And we say, 'No, no, we've got it with bits attached to it and stuff.' But part of that approach is very much to get the message out, whether it's in Crickhowell or Llandrindod, or it's in an urban setting in the centre of Cardiff, getting that message out to those communities.
The related, but slightly separate issue of the wider wraparound services is an interesting one. This shouldn't be separate from the wider stuff that we are doing with the integration of children and youth provision and education, the whole pedagogical aspects as well. We're doing so much of it, and I see good examples on the ground. The challenge for us now in children and early years is how to make those experiences commonplace with more wraparound services. We're seeing good stuff happening; it goes nicely alongside this, curiously enough, because it's all to do with that early years intervention. We need to be doing both in parallel.
But this is very specifically the childcare offer based around working parents, and in answer to that, relating to that wider offer then, well, yes, providers need to be registered and licensed. We need to know that the standards are there. That's what we want to see: that they're able, fit and confident to provide not simply childcare, but to a standard that we know there's child development and there's socialisation, et cetera, et cetera. That's what this is about, but that will include social enterprises, voluntary groups that do that, as well as direct local authority provision, as well as many others. We want to encourage all of those who think they can play a part with us to come on board as we roll this out firmly right across the whole of Wales, and this Bill allows us to put in place the mechanisms to start that happening.