The number of childminders in England and Wales has steadily declined since their peak in 1996. This trend has continued during the Covid-19 pandemic. Childminders care for non-related children for payment, usually in their home. They have to register and are regulated by specific statutory frameworks. For a long time childminders provided the majority of places in the mainly private, for-profit market of childcare in England and Wales. Childminders are able to offer a unique form of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC), with elements that can hardly be reproduced by other providers (Brooker 2016; O’Regan et al. 2020). One of the characteristics is that they care for and educate children in their communities (Griffin and Hevey 2018). Another characteristics of childminding is the capacity for greater flexibility, in contrast to centre-based provision (Ang et al. 2017). Our research explores the decline of childminders with a focus on possible opportunities for the sustainability of these unique childcare arrangements.

The context of the decline of childminders and places is a rapidly changing ECEC landscape since the National Childcare Strategy (Department for Education and Employment 1998) including policies regulating delivery of ECEC and access to places with a dizzying pace, as well as an ever changing structure of qualifications of the early years workforce.

Some of the insights from researching childminding in the 1970s (Bryant et al. 1980; Jackson and Jackson 1979; Mayall and Petrie 1977), the working conditions of childminders in the 1990s (Ferri 1992; Gelder 2002; Mooney et al. 2001a) and former childminders (Mooney et al. 2001b) continue to illuminate aspects of attraction to this kind of self-employment.  The history of childminding is also a story of an increasing penetration of the private space of domestic premises and the private micro business of the childminder by public policies regulating childcare. Our research explores the complex interaction of policies regulating the ECEC sector, family policies supporting parents seeking a work-life balance, the discourse of ECEC with a strong emphasis of education opportunities for young children and the uniqueness of childminding as situated in the heart of communities. 

Historically, childminders are at the bottom of the ECEC workforce hierarchy which is reflected in precarious income opportunities (Cattoretti et al. 2019; Coleman and Cottell 2019), the discourse of childminding as substituted mothering (Fauth et al. 2011; O’Regan et al. 2020) and their position as ‘accordion pleat’ in meeting growing or declining demands in childcare (Bruner 1980). Tensions between the endeavour to improve the status of childminding by aligning it closer to education and the need to show the appropriate level of care in a ‘home from home’ setting may hold important clues for sustainability. In Bourdieu’s (1986) terms, which forms of capital have currency in the field of ECEC and childminding and how do habitus and field interplay when childminders, parents and the government negotiate the stakes? ECEC aims are ripe for unintended outcomes as different sets of policy and market forces impact on ECEC providers and families, fuelled by particular discourses, e.g. of educating young children and of women as active labour market participants, and demographic changes in respect to work and family. Therefore, the field childminding is changing and these new opportunities require a change of habitus as response, though the response is unpredictable. Bourdieu (1977) introduced the term hysteresis when changes are leading to a mismatch between field and habitus, and the time lag observed when structural changes require individuals to embrace new opportunities and occupy a new field position. We apply the tools field, habitus, forms of capital and hysteresis.  

The research took place before the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. The approach is mixed methods research (Bryman 2016) and consists of a sequential, three stage project. Each stage is designed to gather data specific to the research questions. 1. To what extent is the decline in registered childminders in England and Wales due to: a. fewer childminders registering b. more childminders de-registering. 2. Are there any significant variations in the decline by country, region and/or local authority? 3. What are the key factors influencing the decline in childminders in England and Wales over the past several years, from both the supply and demand side? 4. What do prospective childminders, current childminders and former childminders view as the main factors influencing their decision to enter or remain in the profession? The research question were agreed with PACEY, the funder of the research project. The approach provides both, depth and breadth of understanding to the research. Stage one: literature review drawing on academic and sector specific publications, including doctoral theses, national statistics and data of national inspection reports. It contains a description of the policy frameworks in England and in Wales. Major themes addressed are the unique benefits of childminding and threats to childminding. During Stage two we employed an on-line questionnaire, containing closed and open questions to ascertain the role of childminders and their attitudes to a number of specific items. There were 3385 respondents and of these 3096 were childminders or former childminders. Most of the respondents were female (97.8%) and most worked in England (89.3%). Results of the closed questions are reported as descriptive statistics. Open questions were analysed utilising NVivo. The first 200 responses were scrutinised to identify themes until a point of saturation was reached. Apart from teasing out the characteristics of the workforce childminders, the two major themes, see above, were explored. At stage three, data from focus groups and interviews with childminders and stakeholders allowed us to develop six case studies, to capture local differences. We consider perceptions in specific local contexts to illuminate matters relating to supply and demand. These case studies supplement the national data by providing a more nuanced understanding in selected local authority areas. They draw a picture of what some areas are doing well to support childminders. The case studies help to gain more nuanced insights for strategies to halt the decline of this form of childcare.

In the current Covid-19 pandemic, childminders, like other ECEC settings, continue to provide childcare, within a plethora of policies affecting every area of social and personal lives and childminders are taking a financial hit (Blandon et al. 2020). The insights from our research will be helpful for the ECEC sector and policy development during and after the pandemic. The outcome of this research is two-fold. Firstly, it provides a detail description of contemporary childminders, including demographic data, their motivation to work in this field and the perceived advantages and disadvantages. The findings show the threats to sustainability and, by honing in on detail, emerging opportunities to support existing childminders and attract more women and men to take up this form of self-employment. The findings aim to unmask myths that negatively impact on the recruitment of new childminders and show which unique opportunities for childminders, children and families, as well as other services, this form of ECEC provision entails. Secondly, the research demonstrates the application of some of Bourdieu’s thinking tools. Field, habitus and economic and symbolic capital (Bourdieu 1986) and hysteresis (Bourdieu 1977; Hardy 2012) allow a deeper understanding of the dynamics in this specific area of ECEC and childminding. The rapid changes in the ECEC field since the 1990s, with changing demands in respect to education and quality, the expansion of large private for-profit childcare chains and the extension of ECEC for two-year-old children offered on school premises and as well as the increase of free childcare to parents require a new habitus. Our research explores whether there is an emergent new habitus of a successful childminders.

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