Introduction
About Employers For Childcare
Employers For Childcare aims to make it easier for parents with dependent children to get into work and to stay in work. The organisation encompasses a charity and the only Social Enterprise Childcare Voucher company in the UK. We help parents maximise their incomes, manage childcare costs and create a suitable work-life balance. Through working with employers and policy makers, we have sought to encourage and secure better support for families in the workplace and in public policy.
Research, Policy and Lobbying: we undertake research to provide us with the evidence to lobby Government on childcare, family and work-related issues, striving to ensure that the voices of parents, childcare providers and employers are heard when policy decisions are being made. We engage with policy makers and political representatives across the UK, from the Northern Ireland Assembly to Westminster.
Family Benefits Advice Service: our specialist Advisors carry out personalised benefits checks and better-off calculations to ensure that every parent is claiming all the financial help they are entitled to, particularly towards the cost of childcare. We also deal with queries on childcare and work-related issues through a Freephone Helpline used by thousands of parents, employers and others across the UK, and deliver face-to-face events, presentations, seminars, and publish information and research.
About the Northern Ireland Childcare Cost Survey
Employers For Childcare has been conducting the Northern Ireland Childcare Cost Survey since 2010 to explore the cost of childcare and how this impacts on parents in Northern Ireland. It is the most extensive study of its kind in Northern Ireland, and is widely used to inform political debates, policy development in relation to the affordability of childcare, and service delivery.
This survey is distributed through our network of stakeholders, partnership organisations, political parties, policy makers and the media so the views of local parents and childcare providers are heard far and wide. The 2017 survey, the eighth in this annual series of research, received more than 4,800 responses from parents and over 700 from childcare providers. Data collection took place between May and July 2017. Childcare providers in Northern Ireland were contacted through hard copy questionnaires and online. Parents were invited to respond to a survey that was published online, circulated across a variety of networks and shared on social media. Parents could self-select to participate in the research.
-reprinted from Employers for Childcare