Parents of children with special educational needs or disabilities have difficulty finding appropriate care and so do parents with unusual working hours. At present a range of voluntary sector and other organisations provide information about their own areas of interest and expertise. Parents may have to go to a range of sources to collect all the information they need. Local authorities have a legal duty to provide information on childcare but the scope of the requirement is not specified in detail. As a result the extent and quality of local information varies widely.
Information often takes the form of paper records which rapidly become out of date.
While some authorities offer excellent services others fall well short of what will be needed under the Scottish Childcare Strategy. A new approach to childcare 1.28. It is up to parents to decide what sort of childcare they want for their children. This is not a matter for the Government. But it is the Government s responsibility to ensure that parents have access to services to enable them to make genuine choices.