This project will provide a better understanding of how many eligible children in Wales currently have access to childcare, how many of those children have access to a highly rated childcare place, and how that will change during the planned expansion.

Research consistently shows that the early education and care children receive before they start school can be crucial. Evidence suggests early education and care has an impact on language skills, physical and social-emotional development, and how ready children are to start school by age four. But in order to have a positive impact on children’s development, the childcare and education they receive must be high quality.

In Wales, currently families with three- and four-year-olds with a gross income under £100,000 have access to up to 30 hours per week of combined nursery education and funded childcare for up to 48 weeks a year, and work is underway to expand a universal offer of 12.5 hours of funded part-time childcare for all two-year-olds. However, not all children who are eligible to childcare are actually able to access it, due to geographical constraints. 

There isn’t currently a clear picture of which children have access to childcare and especially to high-quality childcare.

In England, Scotland and Wales, accessibility figures are often reported at the local authority level. However, this doesn’t necessarily tell us whether children have access to childcare. A child living near the edge of one local authority might attend a setting in the next one over, simply because it's easier to get to. Local authorities can also cover large areas, and so just because a child lives in the same local authority as a provider, it doesn’t necessarily mean the provider is actually accessible to that child. 

To get a more accurate estimate of current and future childcare accessibility in small geographical areas, we are estimating reachable catchment areas around each provider and using this information to estimate which areas have the highest and lowest proportion of children with a place available to them. We are also looking at how provision can best be assigned during the planned expansion to ensure that children will be able to access high-quality childcare.