- Conference
- 2006 National Delegate Conference
- Date
- 23 February 2006
- Decision
- Carried
Conference commends UNISON’s commitment to campaigning for high quality, affordable childcare by properly trained and fairly paid child care workers. It also requires that childcare facilities should be suitably located in the vicinity of places of work. The campaigning must also bear in mind the needs of lone parents, parents in deprived areas and parents of children with special needs resulting from disabilities.
Conference deplores the fact that childcare is still seen as predominantly the responsibility of mothers and that too many women feel forced to make restricted employment choices that land them in low paid, part-time work with long term consequences to promotion, their careers and their pensions. For too many women finding a part-time job that uses the skills that they built up before having children is difficult if not impossible.
Opportunities to work part-time in better paid and in senior positions would benefit both men and women. Many fathers would welcome the chance to have an equal role in their child’s upbringing. To this end, Conference asserts that employers should adopt family friendly policies and that these should include the right to paid time off over and above the statutory minimum, for instance for child sickness, medical appointments and school visits.
The impetus given to the childcare campaign by the Parental Rights Bill and the Work and Families: Child Care Bill is greatly welcomed and Conference commends the work done by the government to improve child care. However, the Child Care Bill, if enacted in its current form, will place a duty on local authorities to ensure the provision of child care but will not find extra funding to support this work. In fact the existing government childcare provision has been adversely affected by funding problems.
Conference therefore states that without proper funding the necessary level of provision for child care will not be achieved.
Conference calls for the National Executive Council to continue to campaign and to ensure that the following are achieved:
1)consultation and negotiation with employers to improve childcare provision in line with the two above Bills;
2)the lobbying of MPs to demand that the government commits proper funding to child care;
3)the importance of location of child care establishments and the needs of lone parents, parents from deprived areas and parents who have a child with a disability;
4)affordable childcare provided by properly paid and fully trained workers.