Facilities: Childcare

Many parents need to leave their (typically pre-school) children with someone while they go out to work.

This section discusses:

• the Existing provision of this service: What, How, How Often, Costs, Providers and Trends
• the Proposed provision with localnet: What, How, How Often, Costs, Providers and Evolution
• how the existing and proposed services compare

Existing Provision

What

Mainly considering looking after babies and pre-school children during the working day.

How

Working parents typically have to drive their children to a child-minder's or nursery before heading on to work.

Volume and Frequency

This is a sizeable service industry.

Financial Model

Tax breaks in the form of vouchers help make this more affordable but it is still expensive so any reductions in overheads would help to keep it affordable.

Providers

Provision ranges from child-minders who take a few children into their own home to quite large nurseries.

Trends

Recent provision of vouchers has encouraged even more parents to use childcare facilities where available.

With Localnet

What

The service is the same but...

How

Transport of children to and from nursery or child-minders becomes much easier. If nurseries and crèches are located at LocalHubs (an ideal use for one of the higher floors, away from the retail hubbub on the ground floor) then these are en route for parents who travel to work via localnet and then public transport (or electric pool cars). This provides an incentive for parents to ditch their car and travel via the localnet instead. They can travel with their children, say goodbye to them at the LocalHub and continue on to work.

Volume and Frequency

Financial Model

Taking space in the LocalHub should be more cost effective than having separate premises.

Parents save money on transport to and from the nursery.

Providers

Regardless of the organisation behind the provision of childcare, what matters most is the availability of good staff to run it well. As these jobs often do not pay well, many of those who would otherwise love to work at a nursery could have trouble reaching it. Since the localnet makes getting to and from the LocalHub both cheap and easy, it should be possible to recruit the best people from the area - even if they don't have a car.

Similarly, there are parents who struggle to get their kids to a nursery. There are also child-minders who would be quite prepared to jump on a localnet van each morning as it picks up their charges and drops them all back at the child-minder's house for the day.

Evolution

As people's travel patterns gradually change due to the improved local transport, so more and more will find it convenient to travel via localnet and drop their kids at the nursery in their LocalHub.

 

Comparison

The table below assesses the impact of localnet on this service on a scale of -5 to +5 (details here)

	Existing services	As part of localnet	Score
Scope
Frequency
Security
Convenience
Cost
Quality
Carbon Footprint
Time
Resources Used
Reuse & Recycling
Landfill Waste
Other Differentiators