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One million parents missing out on free childcare thanks to policy loopholes, LBC finds
17 October 2024, 14:05 | Updated: 17 October 2024, 14:39
One million parents are missing out on free childcare help to get back to work thanks to loopholes in the system, fresh analysis seen by LBC reveals.
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Five charities have written to the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, pleading with her to look again at those missing out in a bid to boost the economy.
The last Tory government massively expanded free child care to those with babies as young as nine months from April this year.
And it will include 30 hours for all under-fives from the end of next year.
But the free hours are not available to some single parents of disabled kids, many of those in education or training, or those with 'No Recourse to Public Funds' - like parents in the UK on work, study, and family visas and those on pathways to settlement.
Leading charities including Save the Children, Gingerbread, Disability Rights UK, the Carers Trust and Praxis, say the system is "unfair" and exacerbating inequality in the UK.
They've called on the Chancellor to look at the issue again ahead of the Budget later this month - saying it could help in her mission for growth, help slash poverty, and boost revenues for the Treasury too.
In a letter, seen by LBC, they say: "As part of the first Labour budget in fourteen years, we urge you to extend the free childcare offer to single parent carers/disabled single parents, people subject to NRPF and parents in training and education.
"Doing so will address the attainment gap, reduce barriers to work, and support the government’s plans to enhance the UK’s skills base and drive-up productivity."
They point to research from the CBI business group that shows for every 10,000 mums that go back to work, it could boost GDP by nearly £300million a year.
Ms Reeves is expected to announce more plans for a clampdown on welfare spending and a back-to-work drive in her first Budget in a bid to save cash and boost the economy.
LBC spoke to dad-of-one, Shams, who moved to the UK two and a half years ago, and works alongside his wife.
They aren't eligible for the childcare offer as they haven't been living in the UK long enough.
He told us: "You're left with no childcare, you or your partner are alone. It puts a lot of pressure on the family economically, as well as mentally.
"The child is only meeting their parents all weeks, they don't go out. We had to cut our hours to look after our baby, my wife went through post partum depression, and it wasn't helping we didn't have any time outside.
"It was making it all really bad for us."
Penny, from London, is a single mother to three children and expecting her fourth child, who is disabled with MS, but not eligible for the childcare help.
She previously worked as a teacher but was unable to carry on because of health demands.
But if she had a partner in work, she would have been entitled to the extra help, and has used her Personal Independence Payment cash to cover childcare.
She said: “If my eldest had gone back to nursery full time, I wouldn’t be as bad as I am now. My MS has got really bad.
"I wasn’t able to do stuff with my children and I wasn’t taking them out. I limp sometimes now because of damaged nerves. It’s worse when I’m tired. If I didn’t have the stress and if I’d been able to do physio the likelihood is I wouldn’t have the limp.”
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If Penny knew she’d be getting the additional funded hours from January, she said she'd be able to take the kids out to swimming classes and get them out of the house more.
She added: "We just don’t do any fun things. Physio is the priority because it's health, but taking the kids somewhere and sending them to activities, that would be the difference.
"Last year my eldest didn’t have a birthday party because we couldn’t afford it."
Ruth Talbot, policy and advocacy advisor on child poverty at Save the Children UK, said: “The expansion of the funded childcare hours is a positive for many families, but for those who are excluded from the offer it feels like another barrier to overcome, serving to push parents further from the labour force.
"Their children are also missing out on critical social and educational experiences in their early years.
"Current eligibility rules for this childcare offer allow couples to access the funded hours where only one parent is in work if the other is living with a disability or a full-time carer in recognition of the increased barriers to work these families face.
"However, disabled single parents and single parent carers aren’t afforded the same understanding.
"Whilst this is clearly unfair, it also places greater pressure on single parent families who are already trying to juggle sole caring responsibilities alongside being the only breadwinner."
A single parent carer or a disabled single parent is required to earn at least £183 a week to qualify for the free working families offer.
But if a parent in the same circumstances has a partner in work who earns this, they can qualify without any earning requirements for themselves.
New analysis from charity Praxis, a charity which supports migrants and refugees, estimates 71,000 working families with No Recourse to Public Funds with a child aged between one and four are not eligible for the free hours scheme.
Josephine Whitaker-Yilmaz, Policy and Public Affairs Manager for Praxis, said: “Current rules mean more than a million parents are potentially missing out on support with the costs of childcare and therefore unable to work as much as they might like to.
“We know this is already leaving some families at an increased risk of poverty. Children are also missing out on nursery and childcare placements that their financially better-off peers are getting, entrenching disadvantage.
“The Chancellor should heed our warnings about the current exclusions within the childcare system. While we welcome this Government's commitment to long-term reform of the childcare system, in the meantime, the Chancellor must expand the eligibility criteria to make it fairer.”
Following the analysis, a Department for Education spokesperson told LBC: “For far too long, quality early years education has been unavailable or unaffordable.
“The government has been clear that we will deliver on the promises already made to parents, starting with our roll out of 3,000 school-based nurseries to meet local need.
“We are taking the concerns of parents seriously and will be looking across the board at where best to drive change within the system more widely.”
