Responding to the Childcare Strategy

NIAPN commends Childcare for All and the Women’s Policy Group NI for leading the way in developing tools to help analyse and respond to the draft Executive’s “Early Learning and Childcare Strategy” which is currently open for public consultation. The draft strategy can be found here and responded to online by 24 March.

The Childcare for All came together as a coalition in 2019 to campaign for childcare that addressed the needs of children, childcare providers, families and our society at large.

The Women’s Policy Group NI created a Childcare Strategy Checklist. This was created for policy makers before the draft Early Learning and Childcare Strategy was published, and then the Women’s Policy Group NI marked the draft strategy based upon their checklist. Unfortunately, they gave the Executive a 0/9 mark.

Additionally, Childcare for All created a guide to help individuals and organisations respond to the Executive’s draft “Early Learning and Childcare Strategy”. Below is a very useful and considered document that goes through the themes of the strategy.

The Executive’s draft Early Learning and Childcare strategy consultation response is due 24 March 2026.

Thank you to Elaine Crory, Women’s Sector Lobbyist, Women’s Resource & Development Agency, helped create and disseminate these resources.