Ofsted Childcare Register Failings Revealed

Press Release - 11th March 2009

Tinies raises concerns over quality of OCR checks on childcare professionals as survey reveals 46% of parents plan to search for childcare providers themselves.

Tinies, the UK's largest childcare agency, has raised concerns about the lack of checks in place to ensure childcarers listed on the Ofsted Childcare Register have the experience and qualifications they claim.

This follows a survey conducted by the company, which has revealed a growing trend for parents to employ childcare professionals directly in order to save money.

The survey of over 700* parents conducted by Tinies, has found that 26.4% of families have altered their childcare arrangements as a result of the economic downturn and a further 24% of parents expect to change their arrangements within the next 12 months. 75% of those families that had already changed their provider had done so to reduce the cost of childcare with 11% of those parents now caring for their children themselves following a redundancy.

The Tinies survey also found that over half (53%) of working parents currently spend more than 20% of their household income on childcare with over a fifth of parents (22%) spending around a third of their available household income on childcare costs.

The Tinies survey found that increasing numbers of parents (46.4%) who had previously used a professional childcare agency to find a suitable childcare provider for their children planned to search directly for candidates in the future.

"It is understandable that many parents are looking to reduce their childcare costs," said Amanda Coxen, Franchise Director, Tinies.

"However, we are concerned that some of the checks that parents expect to have been carried out when hiring a nanny registered on the Ofsted Childcare Register (OCR), such as checks on their qualifications, are in fact only a tick box on the application form. Nannies on the OCR are not required to produce evidence that they are qualified, nor are they required to prove that they have any nanny experience at all. Until recently nannies registering on the OCR also didn't need to prove they had an up to date paediatric first aid certificate."

"With more and more parents searching for childcare directly, we think it is important that the shortcomings of the Ofsted Childcare Register are highlighted and that parents do their own checks or use an agency that carries out these checks to ensure that they are safeguarding their children from any harm," continued Coxen.

68.6% of parents surveyed by Tinies said that they expected anyone listed on the Ofsted Childcare Register to be childcare qualified and around half the respondents said that they were very concerned or outraged to discover that a nanny doesn't have to prove she has these qualifications when first registering with Ofsted. Tinies has around 33,000 nannies on its books nationwide and isn't aware of a single nanny that has been inspected yet by Ofsted to check they have the right qualifications or experience.

Concerns about the lack of checks taking place led Coxen (who doesn't hold any childcare qualifications) to apply to go on the Ofsted Childcare Register as a nanny. During this process she also discovered that Post Office employees required to check the identity and first aid qualifications of applicants were unaware of what they needed to do.

"Through the Recruitment and Employment Confederation Childcare Sector Group, we are going to be addressing these concerns with Ofsted and will be looking to develop a constructive dialogue on this crucial issue. My worry is that if nothing is done to make the process of registering more comprehensive, then we could face the awful situation of a unscrupulous nanny gaining a job through the internet with a family, selected by that family because the nanny was on the OCR but actually holding no qualifications or relevant experience, and then harming a child," concluded Amanda Coxen.

* Tinies surveyed 707 parents registered on NannyShare.co.uk