The Daycare Trust’s Parent Champions initiative in Liverpool ran from October 2011 to March 2012. It focused on some of the most deprived areas of the city where child poverty levels are high and employment levels and take-up of pre-school care are low.
Parent Champions - parents who had positive experiences of using childcare and/or supporting their child’s early learning - worked with Liverpool Childcare and Family Information Service, along with Vauxhall Children’s Centre in Merseyside, to raise awareness of the free entitlement among other parents in their community and encourage take-up.
An independent assessment of the initiative and a detailed analysis of the Social Return on Investment (SROI), an analytical tool for measuring and accounting the value created through investing in a project, revealed how Parent Champions benefited parents, children and the tax payer.
Social Return on Investment incorporates social, environmental and economic costs and benefits into an analysis of the outcomes for individuals, organisations and the state.
The final calculation from the project showed that the total benefit to society was £1,075, 567, more than a 12-fold return on the total original investment of £84,092.
The assessment concluded there was a wide range of important outcomes:
- Parents had better access to childcare and there was increased parental involvement and engagement in services, particularly for lone parents £620,749.
- children were able to access services at the children’s centre £63,068
- Parent champion volunteers gained employment as a result of being involved in the project. They saw their relationships with their own children improve and gained transferrable skills and improved knowledge about childcare £162, 685
- The Children and Family Information Service received more referrals. Over the course of the project, 217 extra referrals were made £3,026
- Children’s centres experienced an increase in registrations and increased take-up of services by parents and children £98, 938
- The state, principally the Department for Work and Pensions, was also a beneficiary of the project as Parent Champions moved off benefits and into work as a result of being involved in the project £47,448.72
The Daycare Trust is hoping that the project will encourage other local authorities to get on board with the Parent Champions initiative.
Anand Shukla, chief executive of the Daycare Trust, said, ‘These encouraging figures speak for themselves and show that using Parent Champions is a really effective way to encourage families to take-up their full entitlement to early education and childcare. Parent champions give their time for free, but in the process gain valuable workplace skills and confidence, as well as passing on their experience. We invite local authorities to look at out findings and consider making the small investment in Parent Champions that can pay considerable dividends for children, families and society.’