Type of work and life-course phase

Deciding to enter childcare work was often part of a complex chain of events and contexts in which people lived their lives. The in-depth case studies identified five main routes into childcare work:

• • a particular life-course phase (such as having young children and needing to combine family responsibilities with care work in the home);

• • significant life events such as bereavement or divorce or difficult experiences with their own children;

• • voluntary work as a route out of full-time motherhood into childcare work;

• • a recommendation from a professional, family member or friend; or

• • serendipity: just being in the right place at the right time, such as when a person worked in a non-care occupation but was located in a social services context and was attracted to work with children.

Of particular relevance when considering flexibility across the childcare workforce is the extent to which there was a link between life-course phase and entering a particular type of childcare work. Evidence from the postal survey of 305 childcare workers supported such a link. Different groups of workers reported starting their occupation at different ages. In contrast to residential social workers and community childminders, foster carers were more likely to be aged 40 or over when they started fostering, with family support workers following behind them in age terms (see Table 2). The residential social workers in the survey were least likely to be parents, while community childminders were most likely to have young children.

TABLE 2

Age started in occupation by type of worker

Note: 9 missing cases.

On the basis of the biographical interviews, it seemed that the start of a career in child care was prompted by a particular life-course phase in the majority (17 out of 24) of cases. A few carers went into childcare work straight from school, either via a training course or directly into care work. For others, the entry into care work was a strategy for managing work and family life during the transition to parenthood. Most of the care workers were women from working-class backgrounds who had few qualifications. Becoming a mother with a young child constrained what they were able to do in terms of paid work, especially where they had little labour market experience and could not afford to pay for childcare. Thus, some women opted to become a childminder or foster carer, working in their homes while bringing up their own children. In other cases, the entry of their own children into school or secondary school, or their older children leaving home signalled the decision to move into the labour market and into care work outside the home. This later entry into (childcare) work was common among women from older groups.

Preference for working with particular groups

Personal histories and preferences also influenced decisions to enter a particular type of childcare work. Many of the case-study workers expressed a strong preference for working with a particular client group, such as children of a certain age, gender or level of need, and it seemed that this would restrict their willingness to move between types of care work. For example, residential social worker A had started her care work in an army crèche but had found after volunteering in a youth club that she much preferred the challenge of working with teenagers. This had led her into working in a children's home:

Community childminders, on the other hand, frequently referred to their enjoyment of working with babies and young children. Childminder O, who had an 18 year old son as well as a five year old daughter, definitely did not want to work with teenagers: ‘they become difficult then and [pause] and just, they're so headstrong’.

A foster carer, C, preferred placements of boys to girls, partly because of her concerns about the impact of self-harming or sexually active behaviour on her own 15 year old daughter, but also because she had experienced more success with boys and thought that her rural location was less suitable for girls ‘who have got to be in town every five minutes’. She felt that she had ‘done my baby bit. I would rather have the older child. And that's where my success rate has been.’ Family support worker M was likewise drawn to working with difficult male adolescents, whom she regarded as ‘my forte’. She said that she was especially able to relate to this group because of her experiences with her own sons, and relished the challenge that this particular client group provided.

Other care workers had started off providing a particular kind of care, such as short-term foster placements for teenagers, but then realised that this did not suit their family circumstances. G and her husband had begun their fostering career with an independent agency providing emergency placements when their own children were young, but after four such placements had failed, they decided instead to foster a 12 year old girl with an autistic spectrum disorder on a long-term basis. They had found it difficult to look after volatile teenagers while bringing up their own small children.

The above examples suggest that government policy to encourage greater movement within the childcare workforce may have limited success when particular types of work are chosen due to personal circumstances and preferences. This was further supported by analysis of case-study workers’ responses to vignettes depicting movement between types of childcare work, and to a question about the notion of a ‘core worker’ able to work in a variety of settings with vulnerable children and young people. There was general acceptance among the case-study interviewees of the value of a common core of knowledge for all those working with children, and support in principle for the idea of greater flexibility across different types of childcare work.

However, many of those interviewed did not themselves want to be doing a different type of childcare work. Their responses when presented with specific situations in the vignettes tended to emphasise the differences rather than the similarities between the four types of work, such as the commitment needed to take on a foster child, or the different knowledge needed by someone caring for babies and young children compared to someone supporting young people or care leavers. Residential social worker A, for example, thought that the age differences of the children cared for would make it difficult to move between residential care (her current job) and community childminding, since residential care was mostly with older children and ‘early years is a totally different category’. She had thought about fostering, but would not want to provide continuous care since ‘with residential work you leave it and you come home, your work's done, it's one of those [jobs] you can turn off from’. Three of the six sponsored childminders interviewed in depth had also considered fostering, but had not pursued this because they feared that the emotional stress of parting from a child that had become a part of their life would be too difficult.

Commitment to work with children

On the other hand, our study did provide evidence of considerable flexibility and movement over time between types of work with children, especially in work with children within a similar age range. Among respondents to the postal survey, over half (52 per cent) had moved to their current post from another type of care work, sometimes with adults but more often with children and young people. More than three quarters (78 per cent) had previous childcare experience in a different setting, such as pre-school playgroup worker, classroom assistant, nursery nurse or youth worker. Family support workers appeared to have the greatest variety of experience, with half having worked in three or more different childcare roles. Some of this flexibility was life-course related, and reflected progression of care workers’ careers as mothers or as workers.

Also providing support for the notion of a ‘career’ in work with children was a strong commitment to working with children and families, particularly those that were vulnerable or needed additional support. This emerged as a consistent theme throughout this study. It was evident in the case-study interviews, where workers spoke about the satisfaction they obtained from feeling they could make a difference to children's lives, and in the survey data where few wanted to move away from working with children, even if they also expressed dissatisfaction with various aspects of the work.

In the Time One postal survey, for example, childcare workers were asked whether they saw their future in their current type of work as short- or long-term (five years or more), how long they thought they would stay, how often they thought about giving up, and whether they would continue in care work with children if they left. The results indicated a high level of commitment to work with vulnerable children, alongside some uncertainty about future plans. Almost two thirds described their future in the work as long-term and more than four in ten thought they would still be doing the same type of work in five years, while around a third did not know. Only 11 per cent of childcare workers had ‘often’ thought of giving up, and almost a third said that they had done so ‘hardly ever or not at all’. When asked what they would do if they did leave their current job, the majority of respondents either did not want to stop what they were doing (21 per cent) or would take another job working directly with children (40 per cent). Only 5 per cent thought that they would work outside care work, although 6 per cent might change to caring for adults (Table 3).

TABLE 3

What would do if left residential care, family support, foster care or childminding: postal survey

Approximately a year after completing the postal survey, follow-up telephone interviews were carried out with those respondents who had agreed to further contact, which was just under two thirds of the total. Excluding those who provided no contact details and those who were selected for case-study interviews, 87 per cent of potential follow-up interviews were achieved, with 34 residential social workers, 36 family support workers, 35 community childminders and 24 foster carers (129 interviews in total). The great majority (82 per cent) were still in the same type of work a year later, although residential social workers were more likely than the other three groups to have moved on. Of the small number who had left, two thirds were still working with children or families. Three childminders were no longer offering local authority placements but were still providing childcare for working parents, and two family support workers had left to do a social work degree or diploma but were doing their placements in children's services. Two of the leavers had retired, four (who had all been working in children's homes) were still doing care work but with adults, and only one of those who had left had moved into a completely different area of work, in the music business.

Given that the majority of those who had moved to a different type of work in the year after the postal survey had remained in care work, it was not surprising to find that most of them believed that their previous job had provided them with skills that were useful in their current work. Patience, understanding children with difficult or challenging behaviour, communication and relationship skills were all mentioned as transferable between the different types of work, reflecting some of the competencies defined in the Common Core of Skills and Knowledge (HM Government, 2005b).

When the leavers were asked about their future work plans, there was evidence of contextual and situational reasons for movement between different types of care work with children, as well as movement in pursuit of career development. For example, a young woman who had left residential social work since first contacted and was now working in a private day nursery, was motivated by a sense of professional development and saw this work as a stepping stone to work in a primary school as a classroom assistant. But she also felt that in her mid-20s she had been too young to cope with the emotionally, mentally and physically stressful work in a children's home. A family support worker who had just begun a social work degree hoped to work for a charity providing direct play therapy with abused children after she qualified. A childminder who had stopped accepting local authority placements intended to return to social work when her youngest child started school. Another community childminder had stopped this work to train to be a teacher, and a third was exploring the idea of fostering now that she had a larger house and her own children would soon leave home.

Continuing engagement with care work was also evident among childcare workers who were still in the same type of work at the time of the follow-up survey, but who reported that they had considered leaving during the previous year. When asked what they had considered doing instead, over half (18 out of 32) said they would still be working with children or young people, and most of the rest had not had particular plans or ideas. Residential social workers mentioned jobs such as care work in a children's hospice or with disabled children, social work with children (but not residential), and work in a respite children's home. Family support workers expressed a preference for jobs involving some kind of therapeutic or counselling work, such as play therapy, counselling abused children or psychotherapy. A quarter of childcare workers who had considered leaving (8 out of 32) had thought about moving into care work with adults instead, such as working with adults with learning disabilities or mental health needs. Only four were considering moving out of care work altogether, and three of these were residential social workers.

Employer perspectives on workforce mobility

Managers with responsibility for the four different groups of workers were asked about policy and practice within their organisation concerning movement between types of work with children and young people. Overall, there was little evidence from these interviews that managers had yet developed strategies for encouraging flexibility across the childcare workforce as a whole. This reflects the findings of a recent local government workforce survey, where for example only 22 per cent of local authorities reported undertaking workforce planning for workers in children's homes, and just 9 per cent said that they were developing career pathways for this group (LGA, 2006).

In the current study, some initiatives were being developed for family support workers, who were seen as a crucial group in responding to the change agenda for children's services set in motion by Every Child Matters. These initiatives included support for obtaining additional qualifications so family support workers could progress to children's social work, and new arrangements to spend part of their time working in different settings such as schools and doctors’ surgeries or within different social work teams. Managers of all four types of worker described training and development opportunities to help workers progress within their current role, but little consideration appeared to have been given to how different roles might fit together, or to how horizontal as well as vertical progression within the childcare workforce might be encouraged, perhaps as a way of helping workers to manage work/family responsibilities at different stages of their lives.

A number of managers were positive in principle about greater transferability between types of work with children and could see its relevance in the light of more integrated children's services. From the employers’ perspective, reasons given for encouraging such flexibility included potential benefits to recruitment, and an improved and more efficient service. One manager, when describing how several experienced community childminders had recently moved on to other childcare work, described this as a ‘good loss’ which would promote the community childminding scheme in a wider field, and noted that ‘every service needs people that develop’. It was suggested that experience of a variety of types of childcare work would result in ‘a more rounded person in terms of professional skills’ and hence a better service for children, as well as perhaps reducing burnout among staff.

However, other managers cited factors that they thought discouraged a policy of flexibility and movement within the childcare workforce. One was worker preferences, which as we have seen in the interviews with workers themselves also emerged as a factor discouraging mobility. For example, there was a perception that foster carers often took up this work because they wanted home-based work and so would not be interested in other types of childcare work. A common theme in interviews with managers across all four types of worker was that there were two groups of unqualified workers: those who were keen to progress and possibly branch out into new areas, and those who wanted to remain as they were. The latter group could find encouragement to diversify or to acquire new qualifications threatening, and managers in both authorities where the role of family support workers was being extended noted that it was important not to devalue existing roles by creating new opportunities.

A second factor, cited especially by service managers, was a fear of either poaching or losing staff. Given the widely acknowledged difficulties in recruiting and retaining staff for care work with children, it is perhaps not surprising that some managers expressed a desire to ‘hold on to their own’, although it could be argued that the approach of the community childminder manager described above might be more effective in attracting and retaining staff in the longer term. Foster carers in particular were rarely mentioned as a possible source of recruits for other types of care work, which may reflect the priority given to retaining existing foster carers within the service. For example, one local authority fostering service manager explained that developing care careers for foster carers was not a priority: ‘there's other issues that you need to look at before [looking at] what else they can offer or what jobs they can move on to’.

A third challenge perceived by managers to increased mobility among the childcare workforce was structural factors such as the disparity in pay and conditions between different types of childcare work. The human resources manager in one local authority in the study, where workplace structures were beginning to be reviewed ‘to make sure that we have the ability to progress people rather than [them] having to leave to be promoted’, suggested that pay banding was a key issue in enabling cross-sector movement. If pay bands were made wider, he argued, people could be encouraged to move more easily between types of work with children without pay loss or change of salary scale. Another senior manager, from a different local authority, believed that the status differences between different types of work with children would also prove an obstacle to greater mobility. Although she said she would like to believe that a common core of qualifications would begin to break down these demarcations, she was not hopeful that this would happen.