Nursery care: vital for

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In 1949 there were 900 day nurseries providing places for 43,000 children under five years old.

In 1975 there were only 540 nurseries, offering 26,000 places, despite the fact that the same period has seen a dramatic increase in the numbers of women who work.

Such figures give a hint at the chronic decline and acute crisis in the provision of state care for the under-fives.

They are included in a 127-page TUC working report The Under-Fives, published in 1978.

The report is of considerable importance in highlighting the plight of both the under-fives, and of the millions of women who in the traditions of the bourgeois family are supposedly responsible for their upbringing.

This two-part review of the report will examine some of the facts and figures presented in it, and go on to look at some of its 64 recommendations in the light of the practical record of the TUC and Labour leaders in the fight for women's rights and for the extension of the social services.

Stalinist NUPE bureaucrat Anderson addressing a rally during the South Oxford Nursery occupation PHOTO: Laurence Sparham, IFL The 20 years 1956-76 brought a massive increase in the number and proportion of women in the total British workforce, and in the trade union movement.

Women now form 41% of the workforce, and 28% of the trade union movement-with million women now in TUC-affiliated unions.

Yet the glaring problem that remains is that for all the legislation on equal pay and equal opportunities, women remain denied equal rights as long as adequate child care resources are denied them.

There is a massive unmet demand for nursery places. The Report quotes a 1974 survey showing that 72% of parents wanted some form of day-care provision by the time their children reached the age of two, and 91% wanted facilities for fouryear old children.

Recommendations

It goes on to examine what facilities are availablelooking at day nurseries, child-minders, nursery schools, workplace nurseries, mothers and toddlers clubs, playgroups and nursery centres.

Its terms of reference were to conduct such an investigation and recommend means of extending provision for the underfives.

But in drawing up its recommendations, the working party concentrated Axing the nurseries-Shirley Williams on what should be, rather than what was likely to be achieved under the existing Labour leadership:

"We are well aware that a service such as we shall be recommending, and indeed any worthwhile improvement in existent provision will require the allocation of greatly increased resources for this state service."

Prudently, the working party therefore steers well clear of any practical proposals as to how their schemes should be fought for by the working class.

Sharp insight

Despite this, the body of the Report offers a sharp insight into the plight of particularly working mothers under the present lack of nursery facilities. 66% of women have children aged between 0-15 years.

Without child care provision the mother is forced to remain in the role of wife/mother, independence, denied social status, and contact with the organisations of the working class.

In many cases the wife's wage is far from a luxurious "extra" but essential to the family budget in a time of falling living standards.

Stop-gap

This drives many women to seek individual, stop-gap solutions to the problem of child care which conceal the real problem and often impede the social and educational development of the child.

Many women find themselves forced tr ) take on work in the h ome-childminding being the largest single category.

Such work is non-unionIsed, uninsured, leaving the individual deprived of sickness and holiday pay, and faced with the costs of using her own home as a business premises. The (largely female) home-working labour force is known to exceed 250,000.

Where nursery provisions are available they often entail long, tiring journeys to take the child to and retrieve him/her from the nursery or school.

Other forms of child-care often leave the woman worker vulnerable to forced absenteeism if the child is sick.

Nursery provision is often available only through degrading means-tests, forcing each mother to prove how desperate are her circumstances.

Restricted

Women without their own means of transport are even then often restricted in their hours and place of work to conform to the availability of child care.

This leaves • women concentrated in low-paid industries and occupationsoften paying out much of their earnings in travel and child-minding expenses. And women are for similar reasons often unable to study or train for better jobs.

Figures show 54% of employed married women with children 04 were in semi-skilled or manual jobs, compared to only 21% of childless unmarried women aged 16-24.

Surveys show that many more women would go out to work if child care facilities were available, and that as a result of present patterns of child care women are increasingly forced to slot in to 3 types of shifts-doubleday shift; night shift; and Sunday work.

increase There has been a fivefold increase in the number of women working these shifts in the last 15 years.

The final straw is that, since those working in child care are nearly all women, this area of work is itself chronically low-paid, illorganised, and carried out in extremely pOOr conditions.

Yet the years between birth and five years are the most formative in a child's life. A good foundation in nursery education is vital in developing their powers of reasoning, communication and their understanding of quality and form.

Current levels of child care make a firm distinction between the physical welfare and the education of the child.

Nurseries cater largely for the former, and nursery schools largely for the latter.

As for the private sector, there is no state control whatever over the standard of facilities or staff provided.

As a result the situation at present is both anarchic and desperate.

Department of Health guidance directs local authorities to give priority to those with a special need -which may include single parent families, the mentally or physically handicapped; those from impoverished home environment, or with parents sick or handicapped.

Yet even on this basis there are currently 12,600 "priority" children on local authority waiting lists!

The last ten years has seen a positive decline in the service, despite the 1967 recommendations of the Plowden Report, which advocated a policy of universal provision of nursery service as a major educational and social priority.

In 1972 a Tory government White Paper Education, a Framework for Expansion proposed to provide part-time nursery provision for 75% of four year-olds and 35% of 3 year olds by the early 1980s, and £20 million was allocated to local authorities for nursery buildings in the year 197475.

But this plan-the first expansion in 25 years-was immediately superceded by the Tory cuts in 1973.

Since then the Labour government has continued to cut back on nursery building, from £39 million in 1975-76 to a mere £5 million per year from 197981 -a cut of 87%!

So huge are the cuts that many local authorities are now not even taking up building grants to finance new nurseries, since they then face the expenses of staffing and maintaining the nursery schools and classes.

Not being opened In some areas including Birmingham and Gloucestershire, newly built nursery facilities are not even being opened because councils will not pay the wages of the staff.

But the failure to expand the service is combined with cuts in existing nursery provision.

Since it is not mandatory nursery education is the first to suffer cuts at local level.

Nursery places in a class are reduced, two classes are squeezed into one, or whole classes and schools axedthe most well-known example being the closure of the South Oxford Nursery at a loss of 30 fulltime nursery places.

This closure-with the tacit collaboration of full time NUPE and other union bureaucrats-was taking place while this TUC Report was being drawn up.

And it took place in the midst of hypocritical Labour government circulars urging the protection or expansion of nursery facilities which their own spending cuts and cash limits are forcing to close.

The real fight to defend and extend nursery provision, as the second part of this article will show, is inseparable from the fight for a principled leadership in the trade union and labour movement.

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By Trevor Sellars