Who is going to care for all these extra children?

In Denmark we have had state-run day care for children from three months upwards since the 1970s. Without it women would not have been able to work full time.

It worked well in the 1970s when there was suitable public funding to employ the number of nurses for the little ones and kindergarten teachers for the bigger children that were needed.

Since the 1980s local authorities have tried to cut back on opening hours, staff numbers etc.

This resulted in an increase in private day-care, where, strangely enough you may only look after four children on your own. - In the nurseries they are dealing with double that number, plus a few extra tacked on. And I say dealing with advisedly, as leaving children all day in wet nappies and only changing them if their nappies are dirty, is not looking after children in my opinion.

So yes, if there is properly trained staff in sufficient numbers available, council or state run day care can be marvellous. It was in the 1970s here, but if not, it should be the last option parents choose.

The other thing to be aware of is, that once day-care exists, receiving unemployment benefit becomes conditional upon ones child being in day-care! If you look after your own child, you are not available to take a job, so no unemployment benefit.

I think free childcare is a great idea. There will be parents who won't take this up until their child is older, because mothers who can afford to take their years maternity leave will continue to do so. But there will also be provision for those parents who do not cope well. I would like to see the provision linked with something like Sure start which helped parents who weren't coping, but giving any help will pay dividends. And it may encourage lower paid parents to stay in work, at present child care costs are so high it means working for some isn't worthwhile. I do hope that staff would be well trained and properly paid for such a valuable job. Well organised and funded childcare benefits everyone.

I don't think the idea is to encourage mothers to 'abandon' babies, but to provide financial help for those who need to or want to work. those accusing them of abandonment would be criticising them as 'benefit scroungers' otherwise.

For many people, the cost of childcare is prohibitive because of low wages, and those on zero hours (or so-called 'flexible' contracts) would need to have full time childcare in place when they might only be paid for a few hours.

It is interesting that it is mothers, rather than 'parents' who are assumed to be the ones doing the abandoning, too.

Children are walked to and from school and the new site by staff and volunteers- works very well. Where there is a will...

In France, it has been the norm since the war that children attend nursery from a very young age.

It is a choice- and of course staff and suitable premises will take time to find, train and adapt. But once the choice has been made, it can be done, and quickly. Near me an ex industrial site has been adapted in a matter of months.

I know that here in Scotland the Scottish Government in their wisdom have extended nursery places before finding premises or staff to run them but not to 35 hours a week which is what the LibDems are talking about.

The latest thing are Forest Kindergartens where the children are outside thus saving on the cost of heated premises. Seeing as how the playing fields have been sold off for housing, there is precious little accommodation near primary schools.

3 year olds can attend mainstream infant school in this country which relieves at least a years nursery fees. Most are potty-trained by then.

The same thing happened here in Germany. They decided that all children from the age of 2 (potty-trained or not) had a right to a creche place. Of course, the facilities and the staff were nowhere near enough.

Yet another case of putting the cart before the horse.

Childcare in this country has never been solved. In my own experience, unless you have granny, auntie, neighbour etc who are willing to help out, you can forget it. I don't believe these promises. Norway, Sweden etc have great childcare but people there pay huge amounts of tax.

Wasn't that because the money nurseries got from the government wasn't actually enough to cover the costs of those free places?

Anyway, how many babies under the age of 9 months are in nursery provision and, are posters anticipating a stampede of mothers to go back to work and abandon their children from 9 months onward? I can see that there might be a small increase in the take up of nursery places and I suspect that there are enough currently unemployed qualified personnel who can take up the extra work.

I also can't see a massive reduction in care by families, apart from cases where family members are reluctant to step in or find it difficult to offer childcare.

I think a more pertinent question might be 'are the providers going to be properly paid for this'?

And we've already seen what happened when the free hours for three year olds was introduced. All those children under three had fees put up to help pay for the scheme. Cost of food rocketed too.