LONDON, 17 October 2024 - Over one million parents in work or trying to build their careers are missing out on free childcare available to families, leading charities have claimed.
As 15 hours of free childcare is rolled out to working parents of nine-month-old babies this Autumn, those in training and education, some single parents and those who have No Recourse to Public Funds are blocked from receiving the same support.
In a joint letter, five UK charities called on Chancellor Rachel Reeves to urgently reform the childcare expansion programme launched by the previous government to include these specific groups of parents. They are Save the Children, Praxis, Gingerbread, Disability Rights UK and the Carers Trust.
Supporting parents back into work, or enabling them to increase their hours, makes financial sense, the charities have said.
Recent analysis from the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) shows that for every 10,000 mothers that return to employment on their desired hours, the UK’s GDP could increase by up to £290 million per year.
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.”
Many individuals with No Recourse to Public Funds are working, and those in training and education want to build their careers and get into the workforce. For disabled single parents and single parent carers, including them in the free hours scheme would bring them in-line with the free hours parents in couples are eligible for.
Expanding the childcare hours to parents in training and education would help address the skills shortage in the UK which sees the UK lagging in international ratings. While expanding it to working parents with No Resource to Public Funds would help to both address poverty rates and increase tax revenues from the increased hours parents would be able to work.
The charities hope changes can be made at the Budget on October 30.
Ruth added: “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.
Last year it was reported by Save the Children UK that up to 900,000 disabled single parents and single parent carers were missing out on childcare hours because they did not meet work requirements.
As it stands a single parent carer, and disabled single parents are required to earn at least £183 a week to qualify for the free working families offer, if a parent in the same circumstances has a partner in work who earns this, they can qualify without any earning requirements for themselves.
For parents in education and training, the numbers of those missing out is estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands. 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.”
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Notes to editor
*Those with No Recourse to Public Funds includes parents in the UK on work, study and family visas and those on pathways to settlement, including parents of British children.
· To qualify for the new hours, the majority of parents must earn more than £9,518 but less than £100,000 per year.
· Background to childcare reforms
Former Chancellor Jeremy Hunt significantly expanded the free hours childcare offer for working parents at the Budget in March 2023 in a bid to help parents return to the workplace. At that stage parents of three-and-four-year-olds were already able to apply for 30 hours of care.
The roll-out expansion meant that in April of this year, working parents became eligible for 15 hours of free childcare for two-year-olds and this September, this was expanded to included nine-month-olds to two-year-olds.
The scheme is due to include 30 hours for all under-fives from late 2025.
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