CHANGE - Childcare and Nurture Glasgow East

CHANGE (Childcare and Nurture, Glasgow East) was a project led by Children in Scotland and partnered with the GCPH, Glasgow City Council, Scottish Out-of-School Care Network and Thriving Places. Funded by the National Lottery Community Fund, the project worked with communities in the east of Glasgow between 2016 and 2019. 

CHANGE staff engaged with more than 150 families living in the area about childcare and in particular any barriers they may have faced when trying to access services. During this time, the cost of childcare was the most frequently mentioned barrier. 

In addition to engaging with families, the ‘CHANGE Hub’ was established by the project to bring together organisations working with families to share ideas, concerns, good practice and innovation using the Children and Young People’s Improvement Collaborative methodology. The Hub was supported by a Scottish Government Improvement Adviser and had 19 core members, several of whom contributed to working groups. The aim was to lead change at a local level which would reduce barriers to accessing childcare.  

Our evaluation 

GCPH was the evaluation partner in CHANGE and focussed on the impact the project had on access to and use of quality childcare services by families and children; the cost of childcare and the impact on families; parent/carer experiences of engaging with extended nursery hours; any wider community benefits for local people and for businesses; and what difference it was expected that the Hub would make to the provision of childcare locally.  

We produced the following outputs on this project: 

• A profile of children’s circumstances, sociodemographic trends and general health.
• Year One Evaluation Report.  
• An internal document evaluating Year Two is available on request from the authors. 
• Year Three Evaluation Report, published in in two parts. A quantitative component describes childcare provision within the CHANGE project area; summarises the use of childcare services in relation to different demographic dimensions in comparison with Glasgow as a whole; and compares and summarises the cost of childcare at different ages and by type of childcare provider. A qualitative component explores the expansion of early learning and childcare in the CHANGE area. 
•  Summary of childcare in the CHANGE area.