This morning, Natalie Don, Minister for Children, Young People and Keeping the Promise formally launched the new National Children's Charter and School Age Childcare Delivery Framework at St Mungo's Primary school in Alloa with children who helped develop the charter.

The Children's charter will be used to co-design the system being developed around the SAC expansion offer and takes into account funding, staffing and activities. The new charter also sets out children's priorities for school age childcare services, which are: kindness, community, fun and fairness.

Alongside the National Children's Charter, the Scottish Government has also published a short film; local Charters, a Charter poster, and Gaelic language versions of the national Charter and poster. Print versions will be sent to regulated school age childcare providers, as well as other interested people who'd like to receive it.

The Development Framework provides an update on what work has been, and will be, undertaken by the Scottish Government to ensure delivery of the expanded offer of access to SAC services.

The framework highlights the two main workstreams currently in place: Building the System and Testing the Change.

• Building the system is about creating a national infrastructure to underpin growth and expansion, and so is looking at things like appropriateness of current qualifications, legislation, regulation and registration.
• Testing the change is about exploring the delivery of services and the impact on communities; this is being looked at through Access to Childcare Fund projects and Early Adopting Communities, so is considering things like specialist services, funding, rural services, food provision and all-year round access to services.

We believe that these are positive steps and show that the government is listening, however, we also recognise that if there are to be changes to qualifications or legislation etc this will take time and there is still a pressing need to support the current sector. We shall continue to highlight the need for additional funding and resources now as the expansion proposals can only succeed if there is a strong and stable already-existing foundation.

The need for school age childcare is not just in the future, it is current.

School age childcare: national children's charter

https://www.gov.scot/publications/national-childrens-charter-school-age-childcare-scotland/

Short film: Co-designing a Children's Charter for School Age Childcare in Scotland (short version)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3-rVZIlkrw

School Age Childcare Development Framework

https://www.gov.scot/publications/school-age-childcare-delivery-framework/