Help with reply to letter from DFE about agencies

[4365]

"Thank you for your email of 16 February to the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Education and Childcare and your recent emails to ministers, about childminder agencies. As I am sure you will appreciate, the minister receives a large amount of correspondence and is unable to respond to them all personally. On this occasion, I have been asked to respond.

It would be inappropriate for me to give specific details of individuals and organisations who are working with us to develop ideas around agencies. However, I can say that a working group of childcare professionals has been set up, which includes representative organisations and childminder networks, and is considering piloting and requirements for agencies. These organisations hold a range of views about agencies.

We have met a wide range of people to discuss developing childminder agencies and childcare reform more generally. For example, Childcare minister Elizabeth Truss recently met separately with representatives from the National Children’s Bureau, the National Childminding Association and the Pre-school Learning Alliance. The minister also recently met with a group of childminders with differing views on agencies, where they were able to openly engage in debate on the issues.

As you say, child protection and safeguarding are of paramount importance and it is for this reason that childminder agencies and childminders they represent will be subject to the same rigorous checks as other childcare providers. Ofsted will be responsible for ensuring the quality of agencies, including their child protection and safeguarding arrangements, and will have the power to cancel their registration if necessary. All childminders, including those who join agencies will continue to be subject to the requirements of the Early Years Foundation Stage.

We have received a significant number of enquiries so far from individuals and organisations interested in running agencies, including individual childminders and childminder networks. We have also spoken to hundreds of childminders through a range of meetings and events throughout the last six months, including one in Kettering last October. We are now considering how best to further involve individual childminders. If you would like to be involved in this work, please email Childminder.AGENCIES@education.gsi.gov.uk with your contact details and we will let you know about any further events in your area.

I hope you find this information helpful.

Your correspondence has been allocated reference number 2013/0011847. If you need to respond to us, please visit: www.education.gov.uk/contactus and quote your reference number.

As part of our commitment to improving the service we provide to our customers, we are interested in hearing your views and would welcome your comments via our website at: www.education.gov.uk/pcusurvey.

Yours sincerely

Peter McKeirnon
Ministerial and Public Communications Unit
Home - Welcome "






Apart from putting forward my objections to agencies again can you post any links you have of the National Children's Bureau, the NCMA and the Pre-school learning Alliance and their responses to childminding agencies. All I can find is negative articles, so I want to emphasise to the DFE that if they have consulted the big organisations in early years they aren't listening to them.

Personally, I think if they are basing their agency ideas on the views of the "chosen few" then they should be naming them. I suspect it will be a few profit making organisations out to make a quick buck at the expense of both childminders and parents. I will post my response soon - please feel free to quote anything in your own letters to MPs etc.

Many thanks in advance

[Simona]

We are all getting replies with various amounts of info..they must have an army of people all sending letters to us as each letter is signed by a different person!!!

I would take the 'significant amount' of people interested with a pinch of salt...if not a shovel!! I'll eat my hat if true!
Unless you count each cm who wants to be 'independent' as it counts as an 'individual agency' ??

I have posted the reply I received from the DfE in another post:'clarification for independent cms'
My suggestion is don't reply but email them and register your interest in being invloved in further discussions...you have the email in your letter too....imagine if they get thousands.
A bit of pressure on them is small consolation for what they are putting us through