Making a move

Childcare has moved from the margins to the mainstream in the past ten years and is one of the big domestic issues in the run-up to the forthcoming general election.

We've all played a role in making that happen. Childcare is now seen as 'everybody's business' - key to ending child poverty, promoting child development, improving life chances, tackling inequalities and promoting work-life balance. The media have played a big role in generating interest among politicians, reflecting the concerns and pressures experienced by families all over the country. Parent power is just starting to make itself felt.

Daycare Trust has helped bring all that together into a powerful force for change by highlighting problems and proposing solutions, using international comparisons to show what's possible and building a wide-ranging coalition in support of universal childcare. But we wouldn't have made so much progress, we wouldn't have a ten-year strategy, without ministers like Margaret Hodge and Patricia Hewitt driving the childcare and family-friendly agenda forward in Government.