History of NCMA

NCMA was founded in 1977 by a small group of registered childminders, local authority staff and parents. Since then, the charity has grown massively.

 

Why was NCMA needed?

In 1974, responsibility for registering childminders was moved from local authority health departments and health visitors to the new social services departments, who started employing specialist staff for childminder registration. At about the same time, Brian Jackson, a well known educationalist, began a research study, supported by the Social Science Research Council, into the incidence of illegal childminding in two northern cities. Publicity surrounding this study pointed out a large number of children being cared for in very poor circumstances; childminders receiving very little pay; low educational levels and poor support from local authorities.

 

A fierce debate was generated by the study. Jackson himself supported childminders on the grounds that they were a community-run service and that most childminders provided high standards of care against all the odds. He recommended a "Childminders' Charter" together with much better pay and conditions and a wider recognition of their important role in society.

 

Jackson went on to create an educational trust, which published "action registers" that logged the increasing support services being provided by local authorities in the mid 1970s. He also initiated three National Childminding Conferences, held in Bradford, at which childminders and local authority workers from all over the country met for the first time. By 1977 a number of registered childminders had formed themselves into groups to counter the poor image of childminding and campaign for a better deal. In Southampton, they started discussions with the Low Pay Unit, but couldn't make progress because there was no "national voice" for registered childminders. Coincidentally, the BBC was producing a programme called Other People's Children which invited childminders to say what they would like from a national association. By November that year, the first copy of the National Childminding Association membership magazine, Who Minds? was published and the inaugural meeting arranged.

 

The hopes and expectations expressed by childminders for their own association were to improve the general standard of care offered and to promote better support services for childminders.

 

Originally the Association covered the UK, but the different legal differences in Scotland and Northern Ireland made it more sensible for our sister organisations SCMA and NICMA to undertake the support in these areas.

 

NCMA continues to be the only organisation that speaks on behalf of registered childminders in England and Wales.