Ford – workforce development strategies

There’s a lot of appetite at the moment among policymakers for increasing the access of families to good quality childcare. And much of the focus has been on the cost of doing that and bringing down that cost, which is great. It leads to a big demand for childcare. But if the workforce isn’t there to provide the spaces that are needed for those children, or if in any way the quality of the care that’s being provided is watered down because you’re trying to provide all those extra spaces at a lower cost, then there’s potentially a risk that we’re actually doing something that could be harmful in the long run. So, there’s a need for workforce development strategies to accompany any of these other initiatives that are trying to increase the availability of childcare to make sure that as we expand, we’re doing so with no detriment to the quality of the care and the education, which means supporting the development of the workforce. 

And that takes a lot of doing because we’re talking about the careers of individuals. We need more people to be working in the sector, which means people who would have done one thing are now going to be asked to do something else, or we have to have a very customized strategy to bring in workers from somewhere else with those skills that will actually be attractive to them to leave where they are to come and do the work here. And all of that takes a great deal of thinking through. And it can’t be a kind of afterthought because it actually takes a lot of advanced thought to put that in place so that the workers are there, the professionals are there for when those new spaces are in demand.