I apologise for being slow to my feet this evening. Before the noble Baroness withdraws the amendment, may I make a few comments on what the Minister has said, since we are in Committee? I am very grateful to the Minister for her careful reply and for her reference to the importance of the key person in the nursery. I am also grateful for everything I have heard about the improving educational qualifications of staff and the encouraging inspection reports from Ofsted.
What troubles me, and I think may trouble other noble Lords, is the concern that this is a very low-paid workforce of mainly very young women. I recently visited a nursery near here and met a couple of young women who had just started working there. I learned of their history: they were abused themselves as children. I do not know how good their experience was of recovering from that. However, childcare staff are often young women who are poorly educated and may well have had poor emotional experiences themselves growing up.
With respect to levels of maternity in young people in care or leaving care, I believe that research was carried out 10 or 15 years ago which highlighted that about a quarter of girls were getting pregnant before leaving care, and a further quarter shortly afterwards. Young women who have had a poor experience of childhood are often attracted to the idea of having a baby, and perhaps to working with young children, because they seek love—the love that they never had—and they hope that through having a baby or caring for a child they will receive that love. Sadly, what they learn is that the child needs to be loved by them, and that responsibility quickly becomes too much for them. Perhaps that is part of the reason why so many children who grow up in care go on to have children who are taken away from them and placed into care again.
I am going to make it my job to visit a few more early years nurseries before Report to reassure myself that the improvements that the Minister described are taking place. Given the realities of the workforce, I find it surprising that we are moving forward in the way that the Minister describes. However, it may be that this is such a vocational line of work that there are young women attracted to it who have great capacity
for it. That might be one reason why we are seeing such an improvement, despite the low pay and low status of the work.
I do not expect a response from the Minister, but I wanted to flag that up as a concern.