This was received by all volunteers today and I thought that it would be good to share as it shows just what PACEY believe in and how it helps us all.

Dear colleagues

Planning for the future has been the focus for much of our external representation on behalf of members over the past two weeks as government continues to consult on and debate a whole range of new proposals stemming from More Great Childcare

We are looking forward to hearing the views of the many hundreds of members who will be attending regional forums and PACEY Local events over the coming weekends. Alongside an update on the next steps PACEY plans to take to influence the childminder agency debate, these events will also provide members with an opportunity to share views on the new qualification and entry requirements DfE is proposing for childcare and early years and to debate the conference resolution proposing the term “childminder” should change. Some of you will recall that this was keenly debated at our 2011 annual conference and was voted through by members, albeit by a small majority. So, it will be interesting to hear members views on this matter given much has changed for childminding in the last year. We will also be keen to hear how linking regional forums with PACEY Local events in London and Leeds has worked. In many areas the PACEY Local events were oversubscribed with reserve lists created. Indeed we expanded events in two locations to do our best to accommodate demand from members. It is great to see such interest from members in becoming part of PACEY Local.

The next stage of the Children and Families Bill’s progress through Parliament is underway and we are now briefing MPs on our concerns around agencies as well as our support for proposed amendments in the hope that we can ensure some change. As part of this process the DfE has just published some initial proposals on how agencies will be regulated, including how much contact and CPD time they must provide to childminders who join their agency. This has done little to allay PACEY’s concerns and we will be highlighting the challenge of what DfE is proposing an agency delivers. Alongside this work to influence the legislation itself, PACEY is now developing resources for members to share with other childminders to help them better understand the risks of the agency model, seeking member views on where they are aware locally that agency pilots are being established and developing an agency briefing targeted at local authorities in England. All to ensure a wider community of decision makers better understand our concerns and the need to continue to support childminders who do not belong to an agency.

The DfE has also been busy issuing a myriad of new consultations and proposals. Of particular concern are the changes they are proposing for local authority duties around childcare and early years. This is further evidence of government’s wish to remove local authorities from any role in training and informing registered providers and placing a far greater focus on individual childcare providers to take responsibility for their own quality improvement and professional development. This is being positioned by government as working to ensure more early years funding goes directly to providers rather than being retained by local authorities but we will be working with partners in the sector to better understand what mechanisms will be in place to ensure this is the case and that providers are not left with little or no support.

Today Ofsted will launch its consultation on changing its satisfactory grading to “requires improvement” and the inspection process it proposes to operate to ensure improvement is made or providers are removed from the register. At this stage Ofsted’s consultation is focused on group settings and not childminders as it is keen to establish the process and understand the additional resourcing it will require. The process proposed for “requires improvement” is shorter and demands more frequent inspections. At an advance Ofsted briefing this week, PACEY indicated it was content with this proposal so long as the implementation plan for childminders was “months” as stated and not years. Ofsted is also proposing more robust processes for inadequate providers and looking at what more it can do to support the sharing and dissemination of good practice. This briefing made clear that at this stage Ofsted would not be consulting on the inspection process for childminder agencies nor on paid for inspections as it first needs more input from DfE.

We wanted to let you know that we secured a wide range of media coverage in the launch of PACEY last month and that this has provided an excellent platform for us to build our profile raising work on. The next significant opportunity will be the launch of the joint study with IPPR and then, later this summer, we will be working with members and other partners to hold a sector debate on what it really means to be “school ready?”. As well as providing PACEY with the chance to debate this issue with members (to inform it policy position on this issue) it will support us to raise the issues with schools and parents and, in doing so, help them better understand PACEY and its work. As part of this debate, we will also be asking our members to ask the children in their care what they think being ready for school means? In that way we hear the views of the people most affected by this debate, pre-school children. We will share more of this plan with you in our next briefing.