An independent coalition representing organisations across the early years sector has called on the Government to have 'a new vision of early childhood services' along the lines of Denmark and Sweden.
The call was made last week by the Early Childhood Forum in its response to the consultation on the Government's Green Paper, Every Child Matters, which ended on 1 December.
The Forum also said that a priority was 'to move to a new core early childhood professional who would replace our existing split roles between childcare early years workers and early years teachers'. It said such a person should be a graduate, and a proper core graduate workforce should be developed over ten years, with a common qualification structure created for all those in key roles working with children.
But the Forum, which is co-ordinated and administered by the Early Childhood Unit at the National Children's Bureau, stressed, 'Any move to rationalise and clarify occupational roles needs to entail a thorough mapping and understanding of the complexity of the current structures within the early years field. This should ensure that the skills and knowledge of existing workers are not undervalued and that early years as a specialism is not lost.'
The Forum also called for the review by former Ofsted head Mike Tomlinson into vocational education options for 14- to 19-year-olds to include early years career paths. It wanted to see a national debate about the value and status of early childhood and research on the benefits of early intervention and universal services.
While universal services and earlier intervention would 'reduce the need for more intensive child protection services and would avoid stigmatisation', the Forum expressed 'serious reservations about the feasibility of developing universal services such as childcare on a market-based system dominated by private providers'.
It suggested that while schools were well placed as points of contact for a range of advice and support services, so too were doctors' surgeries, community centres, local shops and places of worship, which could all be allied to 'comprehensive local and national websites' and a family or parent TV channel with programmes on child development and family life.
The Forum criticised the Government's 'one size fits all' approach to integrating children's services because this ignored local circumstances and existing arrangements, and it was 'unrealistic' to expect every local authority in England to have a children's trust by 2006.
However, the Green Paper itself was 'a once in a generation opportunity to reform children's services', and while it welcomed the Government's commitment to developing universal services, the Forum warned that delivering them would 'require substantial extra resources' to fund children's centres, children's trusts and extended schools.
It also underlined the important role played by early years partnerships in 'representing voices of a range of providers and organisations', and added, 'Early Years Development and Childcare Partnerships will need to be clear about their role and responsibilities and should be fully consulted at national and local level.'
The Forum considered the planned development of children's trusts in every local authority to be unrealistic. It said, 'The evaluation of children's trusts pilots needs to be considered before the approach is rolled out nationally. More detail on how budgets could be pooled needs to be explored. The model is currently inadequately trialled to move it forward before the 2006 evaluation.'