Scottish Childminding Association Funding to recruit childminders: FOI release

Information requested

"Information regarding how much Scot Gov funding has been allocated to the Scottish Childminding Association from 1st April 2024 to work with Local Authorities to recruit Childminders in Scotland."

Response

To answer your question, we need to clarify that any funding received by SCMA from Scottish Government for childminding recruitment work would have been through the award of grants. We have therefore interpreted your question to mean: ‘I am looking for information on how much Scottish Government funding has been awarded as a grant, or grants, to SCMA to work with local authorities to recruit childminders in Scotland since 1 April 2024’.

The answer is that SCMA have been awarded two grants since 1 April 2024 for work that involves the recruitment of childminders by local authorities.

A grant of £935,390.23 was awarded for them to administer and deliver the first year of the Programme for Scotland’s Childminding Future. This programme includes recruitment work, along with other work to better retain the existing childminding workforce. Due to shared costs between the various workstreams of this programme, it is not possible to provide an amount within this funding that is restricted only to recruitment work.

A further grant with maximum funding of £187,500 will be made available to the SCMA in order to cover the cost of £750 childminding start-up grants paid out under the Programme for Scotland’s Childminding Future during the first year – this element of funding is only available to directly fund the actual start-up grants paid out, and will not be used by the SCMA for administration or delivery.

The Scottish Government is also providing £72,413.95 to the SCMA in 2024-25 to fund a short extension to a 2023-24 grant which covered a range of activity related to promoting and increasing childminding provision in Early Adopter Communities.

More details on the programme are available via our recent announcement.

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