Why is childcare innovation not a thing?
Rachel Carrell
Follow for daily posts on parenting and work life | By day, building the world's best childcare company ?? Keynote speaker | ex-McKinsey, Rhodes Scholar, Oxford DPhil | ?? 3x Mum
Photo by Fiona Freund for #MotherWorks
Looking at government grants for innovation this morning made me reflect on how childcare always falls outside of any official categories. There are grants for ‘healthcare’ and grants for ‘education’ but childcare is in a no man’s land somewhere between the two.
As a childcare technology startup, if we applied for a ‘healthcare’ or ‘education’ grant, we’d be struck out as not meeting the basic criteria.
The problem is, there are never calls for childcare innovation.
Why might this be?
I have a hypothesis and it’s probably not hard to guess what it is.
Childcare is overwhelmingly dominated by women: providing it, purchasing it, evaluating it, worrying about it, talking about it, being affected by it.
Meanwhile the levels at which industrial strategy and grant-making priorities are made are overwhelmingly male-dominated.
Childcare is a massive market, ￡11bn in UK.
To put this in perspective, on Innovate UK dropdown menu you can search for grants for such specific things as “surface engineering, coatings and thin films”, as well as big categories like digital health and rail transport.
Childcare is ALSO essential infrastructure. It’s as essential as rail transport or water pipes. But it’s not typically seen that way or funded that way by policymakers.
Did you know 1 in 3 London schools DOES NOT HAVE an after school club AT ALL? That is an astounding stat. That’s a failure of basic urban infrastructure.
And it’s not even a stat that is officially collected – Koru Kids had to do 32 Freedom of Information requests and aggregate the results to figure it out.
The impact of insufficient childcare on the economy is enormous, and on families' lives even bigger. Parents make profound decisions because of poor childcare: don’t have another child; move out of London; give up a career. I hear these stories from parents almost every day.
The UK childcare system is so broken that at Koru Kids we are working to build a new one from the ground up.
Along the way I’d love to see childcare recognised as the essential infrastructure it is.
Managing Director at Mollard Property Group
5 年Child care should be a no brainer for any government to support. It provides a major boost to the economy by providing more women the opportunity to get back into the work force. Today's world is ideal for working and career focused women. In addition, research proves that early childhood education is one of the best ways to help children develop the social skills and succeed at school and in life. In Australia the government rebates up to 85% of the childcare costs.?
Founder | Entrepreneur | CEO | Early Years Expert | Board Advisor | Creative Direction | Championing Sustainability
5 年Would love to chat more about this with you. Is a very interesting topic. In terms of grants have you looked at tax relief on tech innovation?
Gender equity | Intersectionality | Social inclusion
5 年For anyone who agrees there should be more innovation in this area, please have a look at Sandburg's LinkedIn page: https://www.dhirubhai.net/company/sandburg-work-life-combination? Sandburg is trying to revolutionise the way we think about work and childcare, especially with regards to parents with very young children.
Head of Ventures | Ex McKinsey | Ex BCG Digital Ventures | NED | Venture Scout
5 年Totally agree with you on this. So many women who want to work can’t because we don’t have the infrastructure to adequately look after our kids and companies still lag behind on flexible working in practice.
Gender equity | Intersectionality | Social inclusion
5 年YES!!!! Thank you!! This made my day!