New legal definition for school age childcare: consultation

Unique role and value of school age childcare

The definition of “day care of children” applies to care for children up to the age of sixteen. However, the SACC sector have noted that it can be unhelpful to include SACC under the same definition as ELC because they do not provide the same type of service. The level and type of care needed for pre-school children is very different from school age children.

It is also important to recognise that SACC provides a recreation and leisure service for children and doesn’t have the same educational role as ELC. The services also run for different periods of time, with most SACC services only running for a few hours a day to fit around the school day. The way that childcare services are regulated at the moment doesn’t recognise these differences and does not have enough flexibility to allow SACC to develop separately and respond to the different needs of the children and families they work with.

The Scottish Government considers that creating a new definition for SACC in legislation will recognise the important role of the sector in its own right. It will also support the sector by making it easier to understand the unique role of SACC and its aims and purpose.