About CWLWM

CWLWM is a ground-breaking, sectoral partnership of key national organisations and grassroots practitioners working together for the first time to give a co-ordinated voice to the childcare and play sector and support a high quality, integrated childcare service for the children and families in Wales. Equal opportunity is the primary driver in our coming together and we welcome the opportunity to learn and exchange best practice with other member states as well as between members of the DP. We are convinced that empowering the childcare sector and building capacity is critical for the sector's successful development. We will develop and test innovative strategies to raise the profile of the sector and draw new workers into the workforce.

CWLWM is a partnership of organisations with a shared focus and a shared ethos - seeking innovative solutions for problems within the childcare sector and will contribute significantly to the targets established by the Childcare Action Plan for Wales.

CWLWM partners have strong links with policy makers and to wide networks of practitioners. We will use these networks as well as reaching out to business and the private sector to maximise the impact of our DP's work through the widest possible dissemination and mainstreaming of the outcomes.

CWLWM addresses Theme H (identifying ways of reducing the gender gap and supporting job desegregation) by focussing on the childcare sector and aims to overcome barriers of access to employment and training for women and other excluded groups, including minority language groups and men in a gender imbalanced sector, by researching and disseminating best practice methods for:

increasing access to sustainable and affordable quality childcare, lack of which is a significant barrier to women’s equality in the workforce;

widening access to qualifications and training within a structure offering a range of career pathways, including playwork, to combat low pay in the profession;

combating job segregation and gender stereotyping in the sector, by giving men and women wider career choices; empowering workers in the sector to have a co-ordinated voice to influence strategy and policy;

empowering communities, women entrepreneurs and voluntary management committees to access guidance, training and support tailored to their expressed needs;

increasing levels of access to Welsh medium and minority community childcare, overcoming exclusion, promoting equality esteem for the bi-lingual culture of Wales.

CWLWM responds to many of the recommendations in A Flying Start. CWLWM complements other projects such as Genesis Wales by focussing on the opportunities offered by Equal to develop, test and disseminate a range of innovative strategies for overcoming barriers to the participation in the labour market of excluded individuals, testing ways of increasing the sustainability of childcare businesses and by developing strategies for language support and new playwork training and qualifications. The specific objectives and actions have been developed in Action 1, through regular meetings of the partnership, bringing together a strategic framework being the outcome of a number of partners’ participation in the Childcare Working Group which also included policy makers and other gatekeepers.