Question reference: S6W-05047
- Asked by: Fiona Hyslop, MSP for Linlithgow, Scottish National Party
- Date lodged: 13 December 2021
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Current status: Answered by Clare Haughey on 7 January 2022
Question
To ask the Scottish Government, what support is available for wraparound child care services that have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, but remain essential to its new wraparound plans.
Answer
We know that childcare providers are concerned about the impact of the new Omicron variant on their businesses. The Scottish Government is working as a matter of urgency to assess the implications of the most recent public health interventions on the sector.
The Scottish Government is limited as to what additional financial support can be provided as our budget is fully committed at this late stage of the financial year. That is why we have urged the UK Government to make further funding available to support our public health interventions and the impacts of restrictions.
Since the start of the pandemic the Scottish Government has made more than £22 million of dedicated support available to day care of children services through the Temporary Restrictions Fund and the Transitional Support Fund. Round 3 of the Temporary Restrictions Fund was targeted at school age childcare services recognising the specific impacts for those services. We have also provided up to £3.2 million to childminding services, in particular through the Childminding Business Sustainability Fund.
Our Financial Sustainability Health Check, published on 31 August, sets out the further actions that we will take to build on the substantial targeted financial support made available to the sector since March 2020.
This includes commitments to review the administrative requirements on providers, to develop a five-year workforce strategy for the childcare sector, and to deliver a programme of targeted business, financial management, marketing, and human resources support. We will also work with COSLA and local authority childcare teams in order to map the various existing approaches to the contract management of let agreements, understanding how important that is to financial sustainability.
The Scottish Government has committed to build a system of school age childcare by the end of this Parliament, free to those families on the lowest incomes. We will continue to work closely with school age childcare services to do all that we can to offer support, within the budgetary constraints that we face.