Campaign launched to recruit child carers

The government has launched a campaign aimed at recruiting 83,000 new childcare workers by 2003. The campaign includes TV advertising and a national telephone line that will pass potential recruits to local recruitment helplines.

The government's National Childcare Strategy, which aims to increase childcare provision while improving "early years" education, has targets to increase the number of out-of-school childcare places for 3-16 year olds to one million by 2003. It is doing this through Early Years Development and Childcare Partnerships - local authorities working with partners in the voluntary and private sectors - and claims to have added a total of 74,000 places to the stock of childcare places across England.

Margaret Hodge, minister for employment and equal opportunities, said at the campaign's launch last month: "I hope we'll recruit a mixture of people with varied experience, including men and people of different ethnic backgrounds. There are more childcare and early years workers than there are teachers in this country and we need even more."

The T&G general union last year launched a campaign to support childcare workers and recruit them into the union. By the end of May this year the union had recruited almost 600 childcare workers and had signed seven new recognition agreements with private sector employers.

The government recruitment campaign's national telephone number is: 0800 99 66 00.