Equal-Works

Cardiff County Council’s Children and Young People’s Partnership Framework (CYPPF) aims to:

• identify new funding solutions to enhance the Cymorth (Children and Youth Support) Fund to implement local childcare plans
• research and develop new structures for the strategic planning of childcare places in Cardiff
• consider long-term sustainability of funding for childcare provision.
  

The purpose of Cardiff County Council’s work in CWLWM is to undertake three key pieces of research:

• To identify the range of subsidies available in Wales supporting childcare services. To compare this funding of childcare services with our transnational partners and identify good practice models that may form an outline of options for the Welsh Assembly Government.
• Using focus groups, to develop and test new ways of consulting parents to assess their childcare needs, rather than by questionnaire. CYPPF hope to identify the most effective way of assessing the diverse childcare needs of parents within specific geographic areas of the county. In particular, they will target areas of multiple deprivations, parents with children with disabilities or complex needs, parents for whom English is a second language including Welsh, young parents aged 16 to 25, and black and minority ethnic (BME) communities.
• To work with employers to assess their employees’ childcare needs. To pilot a survey with Cardiff County Council employees to assess their childcare needs and to support the development of a new Childcare Sponsored Scheme. The experience of this activity will form the basis of a set of support materials to enable other employers in the county to undertake the same exercise with their employees. A series of employer seminars will seek interest from employers in being supported to establish a county-wide employers' childcare consortium and to raise awareness of the new tax exemptions for employer-sponsored childcare schemes.

From this research, the research experts will train the members of the Childcare Task Group, who work together to deliver the annual targets set out in the childcare plan, to be more effective in their strategic planning methodology and activity in order to meet parents' unmet and ongoing childcare needs.

Cardiff County Council’s CWLWM work will result in:

• a parent consultation (focus groups) report identifying alternative solutions to the problems of viability and sustainability in childcare provision
• a report on Employer Sponsored Childcare and Employer Consortiums
• a report identifying the range of childcare subsidies: local, national and transnational.
• a review of Strategic Planning Processes for Childcare and a report on good-practice childcare models.