You are here: Covid and Childcare Research Webinar
We are organising a webinar to introduce the Covid and Childcare study to local authorities. The research will explore the impact of the pandemic on the early education and care system, and highlight lessons for improvements to support a sustainable, high quality early education and care system in the longer term.
The study is funded by the Nuffield Foundation and is being undertaken by researchers from the Centre for Evidence and Implementation, the Universities of East London and Birmingham, Frontier Economics, Coram Family and Childcare, and the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
The webinar will take place on Monday 1 Feb 1.30pm – 3pm and will cover:
- Summary of the team’s previous research in the area, Dr Gillian Paull, Frontier Economics
- Presentations on the study, Ivana LaValle and Jane Lewis, Co-Principal Investigators for the study
- Questions and discussions with attendees.
Complete the form here to book your place.

More information on the research
Covid has placed unprecedented demands on the English early education and care system, potentially exacerbating longer term weaknesses in the system’s ability to consistently deliver high quality and equitable services. With funding from the Nuffield Foundation, this study will explore the impact of the pandemic on early education and care services. It will also highlight lessons for improvements at both the national and local levels to support a sustainable, high quality system for the longer term. The study addresses five questions:
- How is the pandemic affecting children’s and parents’ needs for and access to early education and care services in different local contexts?
- How is Covid changing the nature and viability of early education and care provision in different local contexts, and how are services responding?
- Has local support for early education and care services mitigated the effects of the pandemic, and how is this mediated by local labour market conditions?
- What opportunities and weaknesses in the early education and care system are highlighted by Covid, and what can we learn from these about building resilience in the system?
- What should the role of local authorities be, and what tools do they need to support the early education and care system in future?
How we are carrying out the study?
The provision of early education and care services involves the interaction of complex systems, which makes the unpicking of the influence of the pandemic particularly challenging. We will map the different component parts of the early education and care system and the relationships between them. This map will provide the context for exploring the challenges the system faces, and how it could be better managed and adapted to address these challenges.
In order to understand how the system currently reacts to significant shocks, evidence will be collected on the diversity of local authority responses to the Covid crisis within different local contexts across England. Patterns in these local variations will be combined with large scale data from before and during the pandemic to identify how changes in early education and care provision and parental employment over the pandemic period are related to local circumstances and policy reactions. This will allow us to consider the best ways for the system to support provision when confronted by new challenges in varying conditions.
The study will also include in-depth analysis of the challenges faced by the early education and care system in 12 case study local authorities. Qualitative interviews with parents, providers, local authority early years staff and employers will provide comprehensive and in-depth understanding of the views of different stakeholders.
Workshops with national stakeholders will map the findings at local level into the broader national context. This element of the research will focus not only on the shorter-term challenges presented by Covid, but also place these in the context of the longer-term challenges that the early education and care system faces and develop options for building resilience in the system, with a focus on the role of local government.
When are the research findings coming out?
Interim findings will be available from summer 2021 and the final report in spring 2022. As the early education and care sector is facing unprecedented challenges, we want to ensure that emerging findings are available to inform local and national decision-making. If the research findings may help you or other organisations, or you have any queries, do get in touch with the co-principal investigators: Ivana La Valle (ivanalavalle@outlook.com) and Jane Lewis (jane.lewis@ceiglobal.org). For more information about the study see: https://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/project/covid-19-childcare-local-impacts-across-england
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