Osborne to announce free childcare for 2 year olds

[OliviaMumsnet]

In the Autumn Statement the Chancellor will outline a £650 million scheme to provide free early education for about 40 per cent of two year-olds.

Just wondering what MNers think about this....

Brilliant post ballstoit

molly I agree that early intervention works - but it would be so much more successful if the early intervention work was done with the parents and not just the child. There is a huge impact when a family are given the tools with which to nurture each other, much more effective than the best nursery place. Most parents want to do the best for their kids, they just don't know how to do it.

Most of the work I've done has been voluntary, with groups struggling for funding. Yet the voluntary groups have more impact than the pricey sure-start setups (IME).

I thought Ian Duncan Smith was putting forward more family support along the lines of the pilot scheme?

I just think it is useful as I know of a few cases that wouldnt of been noticed if it wasnt for pilot scheme including severe beatings, neglect and sexual abuse. I think by having this in nursery then things that easily and frequently get missed by ss are noticed.

exactly - it's parents you need to target and support if you want to improve the lives of children.

Would be really interested in George telling us what he hopes to achieve here exactly?

Do we not have other priorities?

Agree this is more about social issues than childcare. How many parents of qualifying 2yos are in a position to otherwise go to work anyway.

I may get flamed for this but this is not good what so ever for me. I am a sahm as I can't affords to work and pay for childcare. We bought our 2 bed house hen prices thorough the roof so out mortgage is high. We are now in neg equity. Dh is on 40k a year with his bonus so ew are going to loose family credit in 2013. The cost of out mortgage, bills, car insurance , tax and petrol as well food mean there is not much left. I know everyone will say that you earn 40k so stop moaning but I would live to work and contribute financially to the county bynpaying tax but this is not an option for me.

why would you be flamed pud ?

you are in the same position as many "middlers"

too "rich" for state help, but struggling to make ends meet due to the soaring cost of living and prohibitive child care costs

you're not being flamed pud.

you know what? i'd like to see people who work hard and get to higher tax brackets having a bit of money left in their pockets after the bills and being able to afford to be a one income household.

if they can't be a bit comfortable what help is there for the masses living on near half as much?

i think and hope we're beyond the divide and rule tactics now and will start to see how shared most of our interests are and how in contrast to those mass interests this government is.

yes WE are all in it together and we need to wake up to that but the WE does not include this government - they're in a very different WE than we are.

It's just that I have made a simlar comment before and been told that I should be greatful to have that wage coming in. I think that is just more money going to people who don't want to work. My niece is one of them.

pud you make excellent points. This is no solution. It is just more spin.

i'd say their WE is a very small and exclusive club that the rest of us are very unlikely to ever be a part of.

i am so sad that so many middle class people got hoodwinked into voting these guys because they assumed they'd serve their interests. they won't! you're small fry like the rest of us in their books.

hope people have learned their lessons and will see through the spin next time.

pud, you are more fortunate than many, yes

but you are one redundancy away from defaulting on your mortgage (speaks from bitter experience...)

you are in just as precarious a position as so many others of us

the high COL and recent wage cuts means the safety net that many of us middlers had (to be able to manage for decent periods of time during lean times) has GONE

and it is frightening

the "lean period" is also lasting a very fucking long time

now until at least 2016 by todays reports from Parliament

yep - or one diagnosis away.

pre recession i was a relatively high earning professional who owned their own home (or at least the bank did). i'm now a single parent on disability benefits and a mortgage shortfall post repossession of around 20k to contend with after 18months on the market with only 2 viewings and not one offer.

one affair, one diagnosis, one bereavement away from being the 'them' you're being programmed to despise and see as feckless.

i really hope the scales are falling from people's eyes and we can aim for better in future and not be manipulated by stupid propaganda and divide and rule tactics

yes, saf, and that

all that

nobody, except the very rich, has a safety net any more

because we have had it taken away from us

Yes, agree with that.

We were all encouraged to buy houses, take out loans, but on credit. My brother used to get offered loans, as a single earner of a family of four and a very low wage.

Thank goodness he didn't take the banks up on their offers or he would be in deep doodoo right now.

In reality this is purely about targetting those children who are not getting the support or whatever you want to call it at home and are therefore starting school quite far behind those children that are. Pure and Simple. The dropped the school starting age and that didn't help enough so they are trying to get these children into an environment that will help them get better prepared for school. I think Labour originally planned this and then withdrew it. Whether we think it is worth the money or not without it many children won't be ready for school and will never catchup.

I agree with other posters that this won't enable people to find a job however perhaps the parents of these children could be supported/asked to attend session whilst their children are at pre-school

what parents who are deemed massively unsuitable as parents and have failed to even teach their children the most basic skills should be allowed to go hang out in nurseries? i'm afraid i say no thanks to that.

nursery workers are not parent trainers. it's not the right support.

Helping deprived kids get a lift up - isn't that the job that was being done superbly (round here) by Sure Start centres. The ones losing their funding?

I don't know. So tired of listening to the next pr effort - they just got lambasted for being against women and children so 'Roll out something family orientated that'll shut them up'

fother, yes

nail, head

swallowed - thats what a lot of nursery staff in deprived areas do already toilet train, help learn to talk, social skills everything really. You would be suprised what a lot of children have never done or experienced and not just 2 year olds but 3 and 4s. To be fair I think we are already parent trainers if you work in these areas, and thats what SS see us as.

nail, head, hit.

i wouldn't be surprised. i just believe that surestart proper rather than this pr spin is a better way to deal with it. we could try an effective social services and keeping surestart centres open i'm thinking.

I am part of a surestart and we have the most of these pilot scheme children out of any nurseries. That is where most of them will be placed, just as they are ow but just more of them in socially deprived areas.

I had a conversation with a woman working for 'affordable homes' firm - who warned repeatedly that they were selling properties that were overpriced to people who couldn't pay. Developers continue to sit on their wads. These people need to start paying their debt back to the people they ripped off.

Sure Start - nice idea but the resources didn't reach across the board but the framework is there and should be built on rather than scrapped. I believe every primary school and nursery should have the amenities available to surestart, and all first time parents should have an intensive parenting programme, with revisits every so often, throughout their lives to help with new challenges. And that includes those sneaky home educators too! Health services should also be involved with childrens development.

We need to create a culture of good parenting, once we have that there should be little need for any of this nannying. The trouble with kids is they don't complain, they love their family however dysfunctional and they are just about hidden from the services until age 3.5.