5.18 Although not part of the original research methodology, the evaluation steering group agreed at the end of year two of the evaluation that a workshop with other similar providers might enhance our discrete evaluation of the Play 4 All demonstration project.
5.19 In February 2008, therefore, the evaluation team invited six projects that supported children with ASN to come to a workshop hosted at Capability Scotland’s headquarters in Edinburgh. The aims of the workshop were twofold: to look at some of the challenges the projects had faced, and to share ideas about potential solutions to those challenges.
5.20 The six projects in attendance were:
• Capability Scotland: Edinburgh Childcare 4 All. This service supports the inclusion of children with additional support needs, aged 0-12 years, in mainstream childcare in Edinburgh. Training is provided to staff in mainstream settings in the skills required to include children with ASN, particularly with an autistic spectrum disorder. The project is delivered jointly with the Lothian Autistic Society
• Capability Scotland: Aberdeenshire Childcare 4 All. The service aims to increase the number and quality of childcare places for children with ASN in Aberdeenshire,
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through two means: first, a support worker scheme to discuss the child’s needs with the family, match those needs with a local mainstream childcare provider and support that provider to develop staff skills and confidence; second, provision of a mobile training resource and equipment library to provide training on disability issues to mainstream childcare staff and to lend toys, books and other specialist equipment • Capability Scotland: Inverclyde Play 4 All (demonstration project). Families are
offered a choice of specialist and inclusive settings through the creation of a comprehensive new service model consisting of: a new, specialist out of school care service for children with complex, predominantly physically related support needs; a new, specialist out of school care service for children with language and communication disorders; a new, inclusive out of school care service for 12-16 year olds with a range of additional support needs; and a new inclusive service to support children with ASN in accessing current mainstream out of school care service.
• NCH Lisalanna. Lisalanna is a purpose-built respite unit situated in the centre of Cumnock, East Ayrshire. The NOQC project provides after-school care for children with ASN, aged 5 to 12, during term time
• Glasgow City Council: After School Scheme. The project provides term-time after school care (3.00pm to 6.00pm) in three schools, for children with severe disabilities. Each of the three sites offers ten places – a total of 30 places – and eight staff are required on each site
• Enable: East Dunbartonshire PALS. Using a similar model to that of Capability Scotland, the project seeks to develop the capacity of mainstream childcare providers to include children with ASN in their provision. The model involves four part time staff working as a peripatetic team to support mainstream providers.
5.21 A summary of workshop discussions follows.
Challenges faced by the projects
Lower take-up than expected
5.22 Several projects have found that the take-up by beneficiaries has not been as high as anticipated.
• There can be a time lag of several years between researching the local need for the project, and actually putting the staff in place to commence work. This can mean that the target audience for the project changes in the intervening period: for example, the target cohort of children with ASN has grown older, or their needs (or family’s needs) have changed. In East Ayrshire, for example, the overall population has declined – meaning that the population of children with ASN has also declined proportionally. In other cases, the parents who originally needed childcare later find that their real need is for respite. In at least one area, the delay in getting up and running meant that some of the potential beneficiaries were taken by another provider.
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• It can be hard to ascertain the size of the potential market for this provision. Accurate statistics are not always readily available at local level.
• The size of the potential market has been affected by the pre-existence of other provision that meets families’ needs. This raises the question of whether the NOQC projects should have received funding at all: did they respond to genuine market demand, or was existing provision perhaps already sufficient for the local market? • Transporting children to, and between, sites has been problematic. The Glasgow
project reported that the cost amounted to £80,000 per site per year, for three sites – a total of £240,000 per year, which ate up a significant amount of the budget. By the third year of the project, parents were asked where possible to escort their children home in order to keep transport costs down. Transport problems for the Inverclyde Play 4 All project have also been noted in our previous reports.
Staff recruitment
• Many of the posts created by these projects were for childcare support workers, who would liaise with families to ascertain the needs of each child and then work with mainstream childcare providers to develop their skills and their understanding of disability issues. This work not only requires a particular type of person, with a range of social and other skills, but generally involves part-time, varying and/or inconvenient hours. The problem is magnified in rural areas, when the post holder has a large, dispersed region to cover. The job description and person specification are therefore likely to attract only a small pool of candidates, making recruitment a problem for many projects.
• Other recruitment barriers include the fact that contracts for grant-funded projects are short-term. In areas of high employment, such as Edinburgh, potential candidates may already be employed in (or seeking) permanent contracts and not likely to be tempted by a fixed-term job with varying hours.
Resistance from mainstream providers
• Some mainstream providers are resistant to the idea of including children with ASN in their provision. Support workers can spend a disproportionate amount of time trying to change the attitudes of staff at management level in mainstream provision – even though the childcare workers themselves may be open to accepting children with ASN.
• In some schools, headteachers are reluctant to allow non-school staff (i.e. external childcare workers) to care for the children after school – despite the fact that mainstream teachers may already be tired by the end of the normal school day and not keen to stay until 6.00pm to supervise an after-school scheme. This could be the result of a perceived lack of trust in the quality of external childcare provision, or simply a feeling that “we know these children best”.
45 Transport
• The need for transport to venues, and a lack of flexibility of transport routes/provision by local authorities, is a big problem for some projects. This is by no means a new issue (a SOSCN Childcare Strategy seminar held in June 2006, for example, highlighted it as a huge barrier).
Potential solutions to the challenges
Marketing
5.23 It goes without saying that good marketing is crucial to attracting beneficiaries (whether families or childcare providers) and filling the target number of places. Marketing can be described as the strategies and tactics used to identify, create and maintain satisfying relationships with customers that result in value for both the customer and the marketer. These principles apply just as much to childcare provision as they do to the development of any product. Marketing tips for projects include the following:
• Marketing starts with research. The majority of these NOQC projects engaged in research of some form to establish the nature and scale of their target market - whether through focus groups with parents, analysis of local authority data, or based on their own knowledge and experience. Even then, the time lag between research and project inception was in some cases so long that the market changed in the intervening period. Market research should also include a review of other local providers offering the same, or similar, provision. If there are other local providers offering a similar service as the project, they may feel threatened. In such cases it is vital to give them as much information as possible about the project at an early stage – e.g. to reassure them that it is aiming for a different target market, or to demonstrate that it is offering something that is not directly competitive. In some cases it can be useful to establish a partnership with another organisation: for example, the Edinburgh Childcare 4 All project is delivered jointly with the Lothian Autistic Society.
• Relationship building is vital: projects will need to establish personal, face to face contact with people of influence at local level - for example, the Inclusion Officer within the local Early Years team, Social Work managers, headteachers, etc – and try to get them on board. Then try to secure a meeting with other members of the same organisation to promote the project directly to them. The more key people who come on board, the more referrals the project is likely to obtain. It is important to remember that there is staff turnover within organisations: the social work manager spoken to at the start of the project may no longer be there now.
• It is useful to be aware of, and in communication with, the appropriate local and regional networks – those serving parents, voluntary organisations, etc. There is value to be gained from attending open nights, delivering information sessions, etc.
• Distribution of information / promotional leaflets can be useful, but many potential members of the project’s audience might still be missed. Schools and other providers
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receive a large volume of mail and other literature, and it is easy for leaflets to be binned without being distributed internally. Promotional leaflets should not be the only method of spreading the word about a project: following up with information sessions or similar can be useful.
• It is easy to target specialist schools when seeking referrals onto a project, but remember that there are many children with ASN in mainstream schools who might easily be missed. Mainstream schools tend not to receive as much information about services for children with additional support needs as they might. It can be useful to make contact with school guidance teachers when marketing a project.
• Consider the less obvious sources of potential referrals – such as Jobcentre Plus, for example.
• Word of mouth is crucial. Existing customers who have been satisfied with a service can be influential in spreading the good word. One of the problems faced by these NOQC projects has been getting parents to ‘let go’ of their child and trust them to an unknown provider. It can be several years before the reputation of a project is sufficiently well established for parents to have the confidence to trust it – by which time grant funding is coming to an end. It is useful to encouraging parents to spread the good word amongst their peers as early as possible.
• There is no single recommended way of marketing a childcare project for children with additional support needs: a combination of methods should be deployed. Mass mailouts should be followed up by one-to-one discussions and group information sessions with key influencers.
• Do not underestimate the resource that is needed to market a project effectively.
Staff recruitment
5.24 The majority of NOQC projects in our workshop had experienced difficulties recruiting sufficient candidates of the right quality. It was agreed that the competencies required of a typical support worker include: negotiation skills and persuasiveness; communication skills; patience; tact; ability to identify and solve problems; flexibility; and capacity to develop innovative ideas. Ideally they should also have appropriate qualifications and experience. Candidates who meet all these requirements, and who are also willing to work part-time and varying hours, are hard to find.
• One potential solution identified by workshop participants was for projects to work more closely with local colleges and training providers. Students working towards qualifications in childcare or social care may be a pool of untapped resource for this kind of project. By speaking to course leaders or department heads in training organisations, it may be possible jointly to identify work-related placements for students that will meet the requirements of the individual student, the training organisation and the childcare project. Clearly, students will not yet have the qualifications or experience normally expected for this kind of work, but they could be trained in the basics.
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5.25 Workshop participants agreed that there may be merit in taking this idea further. If projects’ need for support workers can be complemented by students’ need for work experience/placements, and if these placements can be accredited, then the result is a ‘win’ for all concerned.
Supporting mainstream providers
5.26 Workshop participants were aware that some mainstream providers remain reluctant to include children with ASN in their provision. There are various reasons for this: they have deep-seated attitudinal issues that make them unwilling to include such children; they are fearful of the unknown, lacking confidence to deal with children’s physical or learning disabilities; they may simply be stuck in their ways and afraid of change; and they may be concerned about the potential cost implications.
• Training is the most obvious method of increasing mainstream providers’ capacity to include children with ASN. Play 4 All in Inverclyde, for example, has delivered an impressive list of training to childcare providers across the local authority, from generic disability awareness raising to training on specific conditions (epilepsy, Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder , etc).
• However, training is ‘not the be all and end all’: building the confidence of staff is most important. This can be done simply by demonstrating how to address a particular issue (whether administering medication, taking a child to the toilet, engaging a child in play activities, etc) and then observing the staff doing this themselves. By doing something once staff gain the confidence to do it again, and the fear of the unknown is removed.
• Staff exchanges between different providers can be a useful element of a project. For example, a mainstream childcare worker who has benefited from the project can be placed in an organisation where children with ASN are not yet included. Or similarly, a worker from a setting where children with physical disabilities are accommodated may benefit from observing a setting which includes children with behavioural or learning difficulties.
• In the case of mainstream providers who remain unwilling to include children with ASN, one suggestion is to “stop trying to be friends with everyone”: where friendly persuasion does not succeed in altering a mainstream provider’s attitudes, it may eventually be appropriate to cite legislation. In one instance, for example, a provider refused to accept a child with epilepsy because they did not want to administer his medication; it was made clear that they were obliged by law to do this, and that support and training would be provided. The child is now settled with this provider.
Other delivery issues
5.27 Transport for children with ASN has been a significant barrier for several years. We might reiterate the suggestion of SOSCN (from its 2006 seminar) that “there is a need to gather evidence of good practice across Scotland, and the UK, and to highlight this problem at a national level.”
48 Sustainability
5.28 Most project representatives at the workshop agreed that continuing their project after NOQC funding ended was their major concern. Several projects are continuing on a short-term basis: one, for example, has secured an additional six months’ funding from the local authority and may be granted a further six months’ funding after that. In other local authorities, however, there are budget deficits that make even short-term funding impossible to secure.
• There are indications that take-up of services, and hence fee income, could be increased if parents made greater use of financial benefits available to them. Anecdotally, it seems that many families do not take up the childcare element of the Working Tax Credit, which is equivalent to up to 80% of childcare costs provided by a registered childminder, out-of-school club or another approved provider. The direct payments scheme may also be under-utilised. More work needs to be done nationally to encourage greater take-up of these schemes.
• Many projects targeting children with ASN suffer from lower take-up if (for reasons specified by their funder) they require parents to be in work or training. For many non-working parents, these projects offer a much-needed element of respite that improves the quality of their lives: their aim is not to join the labour market, but to re- charge their batteries. There is a wider policy issue to be addressed here: childcare alone is not sufficient to help parents of children with ASN into work, and other mechanisms may be required.
5.29 The purpose of the workshop was to talk specifically about the challenges faced by these projects, in the light of the emerging findings from our review of Play 4 All. However, it is important to be aware of the many successes that these projects have demonstrated. The impact on individual children and their families should not be under-estimated. Two examples of praise for the Play 4 All project are typical of feedback from families:
“J. has many difficulties in communicating to others. He is also an only child which means at home or with us he gets a lot of attention and doesn’t have to consider other children’s needs. I do feel it has been great for him to continue working/playing with others during the holidays and this has helped to keep him into a daily routine. Staff are well trained and focus on the children all of the time. There is a good atmosphere amongst the staff which helps the kids to enjoy their time spent there. I feel this is a superb service.”
“It is a fantastic service because it supports people who have additional pressures in life, it gives relief to those concerned. The staff are trained, very friendly and approachable. Personally it gave my daughter the chance to be with other children through the holidays, to have fun and go on day trips. She was happy and content the whole time which made me happy and content also.”