Children's secretary Ed Balls wrote to Ofsted chief inspector Christine Gilbert last October, asking Ofsted to change immediately the way it regards reciprocal childcare, following the story broken by Nursery World of how two policewomen were banned by Ofsted from looking after each other's children unless they registered as childminders (News, 23 September 2009).
More than 20,000 people signed a petition on the Number Ten website calling for the laws around reciprocal childcare to be changed. A Government consultation on the legislation for reciprocal childcare in December received more than 250 responses, with the majority in favour of amendments.
The Government has only now clarified amendments that will be made to the Childcare Act 2006.
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