James Taylor, Rural Child Poverty Officer at the Improvement Service, writes about the rural childcare challenge, its current state, and what to expect next.
Access to affordable, flexible, and high-quality childcare is a vital tool in the collective effort to fight child poverty in Scotland’s rural and island communities. Its provision remains a significant challenge across rural communities, constraining parents' economic and personal prospects and contributing to depopulation, as young families are driven away and efforts to attract new residents become increasingly difficult.
Recent evidence has highlighted the scale and urgency of the issue, recognising that adequate childcare is not simply a convenience but key strategic infrastructure in lifting families out of poverty and allowing children to thrive. Indeed, 43% of rural businesses report difficulties recruiting staff due to childcare issues, with 29% reporting challenges in retaining staff (HIREP, 2025).
The challenges we face are both structural and practical, ranging from workforce shortages and geographic dispersion to funding models and regulatory constraints. The IS’s Child Poverty Team have placed rural childcare at the top of our list of priorities for this year and aim to contribute to the collective effort to address this issue. As part of this we aim to continue to work closely with local partners to research, develop, and test innovative ways of working. We will also be providing opportunities for knowledge exchange through the Rural Child Poverty Network and our Rural Childcare Sprint series which will be taking place between September and November this year.
Why is rural childcare a challenge?
Rural and island childcare operates within a fundamentally different set of conditions to urban contexts, which shapes both availability and sustainability. Low and fluctuating populations coupled with dispersed communities mean that services often operate at a very small scale, making them financially fragile. For example, in Highland, there are around 40 rural ELC settings with fewer than 8 children. Current per-child funding models make it difficult to sustain a service over time. Settings must also cater for families who have to travel over 20 miles to access childcare, often on single track roads which can be disrupted by adverse weather (HIREP, 2025). These challenges with provision are compounded by workforce difficulties in communities where tourism and hospitality dominate, often offering better wages and more flexible hours.
Crucially, existing childcare policies and models do not align with rural realities. Many parents rely on seasonal or non-standard working patterns with 13% of those in the Highlands and 17% in the islands having more than one job (My Life in the Highlands and Islands Survey, 2022). In practice, this means that even where statutory early years provision is available during the day, there is often little to no access to childcare before or after school, between 3pm and 6pm, or during school holidays. In some communities like Dunvegan in Skye, there has been no wraparound or childminding care for upwards of 12 years.
The IS’s ‘Childcare Challenge’ paper distilled these challenges into five key areas:
- Workforce recruitment and retention
Small labour pools, low pay relative to the cost of living and limited opportunities for progression make it difficult to sustain childcare provision in rural Scotland. Current management regulations such as limits on the number of settings one manager can oversee can be impractical in more geographically dispersed communities.
- Financial viability
Due to small and fluctuating populations, many rural childcare providers struggle to remain financially viable. Funding models based on per-child enrolment do not reflect the realities of rural childcare provision.
- Regulation and flexibility
While national regulation of childcare is vital for quality and safety, it can unintentionally disadvantage small or rural services with lengthy registration processes, inflexible rules and perceptions of bureaucracy which can discourage potential childminders and make service delivery more challenging.
- Coordinating and planning
Childcare, early learning and wraparound care are often planned and delivered separately, creating fragmented and inconsistent provision. Parents often have to manage complex, time-consuming arrangements, which can limit employment opportunities and overall family wellbeing.
- Valuing the sector
The childcare workforce and sector are often undervalued despite their essential contribution to the economy, communities and child wellbeing. Low pay, high workloads and limited recognition of their importance contribute to high staff turnover and difficulty recruiting.
What needs to happen?
In the face of these challenges, there is a growing recognition that more flexible and locally targeted approaches to childcare could help to better support rural and island communities.
The IS’s work in collaboration with local authority child poverty leads, third-sector partners and other national agencies, highlighted a number of potential measures which could help to address some of the challenges identified.
Partners noted that reforming funding models to better reflect rural realities could be critical. This might include the introduction of guaranteed baseline financial support for childcare settings, multi-year funding arrangements, and exploring approaches such as a guaranteed living wage for childminders to provide greater stability within the workforce.
Alongside this, there are calls from partners for greater regulatory flexibility to enable smaller scale and community-based provision to operate more effectively, including the use of non-domestic settings for childminding and a more proportionate registration process. Partner such as the Scottish Child-Minding Association also highlight the need to strengthen the role of childminders. HIREP members are keen to explore new and innovative models, such as a rural childcare practitioner to allow need to be met locally. Others note that more integrated models of care, including approaches such as the Care and Learning Alliance’s Single Care Model, also offer potential to deliver care across age groups in a more joined-up and efficient way.
Case study: In Japan, they are at the forefront of intergenerational care with programmes aimed at improving social capital by enabling care of children and the elderly within a single setting. So far, the research has shown the model to strengthen a community’s intergenerational ties and could be a potential way of retaining population (HIREP, 2025).
By no means an exhaustive exploration of the potential solutions to the rural childcare challenge, the approaches detailed here represent co-created, placed based and innovative ways forward. But the time for exploration must now give way to implementation, moving from understanding challenges and designing solutions to testing, adapting, and embedding them within local systems.
So what is being done?
Current policies and delivery activity/work being done
While we face such a great challenge, there is a growing body of excellent initiatives, pilots and action being taken across Scotland to test more flexible and rurally appropriate approaches to childcare.
In a number of rural and island areas, new delivery models are being explored. Communities in Skye, Kinlochbervie and Uist are keen to pilot the Rural Childcare Practitioner model, and research is already underway for a childcare shared space model in Barra supported by Scottish Government Addressing Depopulation Action Plan (ADAP) and CnES funding. In Tiree, all-age childcare in the school setting could be tested, while Argyll and Bute Council are delivering creative local employability support for careers in childcare in partnership with InspirAlba.
There are also examples of excellent targeted interventions to address specific barriers to childcare such as transport. In Moray, the M-Connect service supports children to travel from school to childcare provision, mitigating the need for parents to come away from work. In Arran, North Ayrshire Council has tackled recruitment issues with ‘golden handshake’ payments of £2000 for practitioners who qualify as childminders to help them get started, contributing to Arran now having 3 childminders.
Regionally and nationally, programmes such as the Scottish Childminding Association’s programme for Scotland’s Childminding Future as well as Highlands and Islands Enterprise’s support for recruitment campaigns, research into the Single Care Model and targeted investment in childcare infrastructure have had an impact on recruitment and retention. Furthermore, Scottish Government have, through the ADAP, positioned childcare as a priority alongside housing, transport and education, recognising its vital role as part of rural Scotland’s strategic infrastructure.
The activity in this space is encouraging and highlights both the scale of the challenge and the extent of innovation already underway. While no single model or policy can provide a universal solution, these examples demonstrate the energy and willingness to tackle the childcare challenge in our rural and island communities from the ground up.
What is on the horizon?: IS plans for a rural childcare sprint series
Looking ahead, national policy continues to emphasise childcare as a key lever in tackling child poverty, with the Scottish Government’s recent publication of the Bringing Hope, Building Futures delivery plan for 2026-2031 highlighting the expansion of flexible and affordable childcare alongside wider commitments around wraparound care, breakfast clubs, and more joined up whole family support.
At the same time, regional and local work continues to build momentum. HIREP’s recently published evidence report indicates a pipeline of ongoing and emerging activity, including the development of a rural and islands childcare toolkit as well as continued testing of models such as the single care model and rural childcare practitioners. Alongside this, there are ongoing conversations with Active Schools to explore opportunities to expand afterschool provision as well as the potential role of the Camanachd Association in supporting community-based models of afterschool care/activities in a similar way to SFA Extra Time.
Within this context, the IS is exploring how best to add value in this space, ensuring the energy generated is harnessed and driven toward solutions to tackling the rural childcare challenge.
We intend to host a short series of themed meetings in September, October and November 2026 for what we are describing as a rural childcare sprint. This will bring together partners from across child poverty, economic development, planning and childcare delivery.
The focus of these sessions will be on the Scottish Government’s latest Delivery Plan, Bringing Hope, Building Futures and will bring local and national partners together to understand and brainstorm around how rural areas can best take advantage of the proposed support around childcare
The first session will focus on wrap around care and breakfast club provision and how this might be delivered in rural settings. The Delivery Plan announced £2.5 million investment in wraparound activity clubs.
The second will focus on investment in childcare as supporting employment for the priority families, supported by £15 million from the Scottish Government.
The third will focus on whole family, approaches to childcare in rural settings including how the Scottish Government’s announced £19 million investment in Transport to Employment for parents will be delivered in rural settings.
With this sprint series we intend to look towards a more coordinated and delivery-focused approach to tackling the rural childcare challenge.
Sustaining the momentum already ignited is critical - not only in continuing to promote childcare as essential economic and social infrastructure underpinning the long-term sustainability and prosperity of our rural and island communities, but also in ensuring that existing ambition is translated into delivery models that are flexible, place-based and responsive to local need.
Our hope is that as well as informing local services design and policy development, findings from the session will be presented at December child poverty conference.
HIREP (2025) Available at: final-hirep-rural-and-island-childcare-scotgov-evidence-report-april-2025_.pdf
My Life in the Highlands and Islands Survey (2022) Available at: My life survey | HIE
This blog was amended on 07/07/2026