Earlier in the week I chaired the AGM of the Downshall Pre-School Playgroup, as Chair of Trustees. 09/10 has been another very successful year for the Pre-School Playgroup where, as part of delivering our core business of enhancing the development and education of children under statutory school age by encouraging their parents to understand and provide for the needs of their children, we have organised a visit from the Road Safety Roadshow, held International Lunches for parents and children, hosted a Redbridge Institute of Adult Education 'Play and Learn' course for parents, held weekly cookery sessions for children, regularly visited the Mobile Library, and held our annual picnic in Seven Kings Park and Christmas Party with visits from Mr Zippy and Father Christmas.
However changes to funding and to funding structures are making the delivery of successful and high quality community-based and charitably run childcare settings like Downshall Pre-School Playgroup increasingly difficult to sustain. The problem is essentially that the Government and local authorities increasingly wish to treat such settings in the same way as schools by operating the same funding structures. As a result, the funding process for childcare settings has become increasingly complex and bureaucratic imposing an additional administration burden on these settings at the same time that funds overall are becoming tighter.
This, in itself, is part of a wider problem with the way in central and local government tend to engage with the Third Sector generally. Good intentions about tapping the skills of volunteers and the contacts of community groups are undercut by the reluctance of local authorities and government departments to bear the cost of monitoring and managing lots of small contracts with lots of small organisations. Instead, the tendency is to tender with larger organisations or consortia which while they may be Third Sector organisations do not possess the grassroots confidence, contacts and volunteers which community groups possess and ministers wish to tap.
Sometimes, as with childcare currently, everyone gets swept up into a process designed for large organisations while on other occasions the large organisation gets the contract with the bulk of the funding and then sub-contracts the work to smaller groups at considerably less viable rates. These approaches improve the efficiency of the department running the contracts but removes or reduces the ability of genuinely community-based organisations to deliver. The current funding structures for childcare are running this risk at a time when demand for childcare remains high and in many areas is rising.
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Stevie Wonder - Isn't She Lovely.
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