Coram Family and Childcare Trust

About Coram Family and Childcare

Many parents in the UK today are frozen out of work by the cost of childcare and disadvantaged children fall behind their peers before they even start school. Coram Family and Childcare works to change this and to make the UK a better place for families.

We focus on childcare and the early years to make a difference to families’ lives now and in the long term. We work to make sure that every child has access to high quality childcare and every parent is better off working once they have paid for childcare. Families who face disadvantage, social exclusion and poverty are at the heart of our work.

What we do

Our parent-led programmes support families to achieve their potential and services to deliver solutions that meet families’ needs. Our Parent Champions National Network has been running since 2007, helping families that are more likely to miss out on services to get the support that helps them to thrive.

Our research provides definitive data on the issues families face, including our Childcare Survey which is the most widely used source of information on the costs and availability of childcare in the UK.

Bringing together what we learn from our on the ground work with families and our research, we make change happen by campaigning for solutions that families need.

Before August 2018, we were known as the Family and Childcare Trust.

Our parent-led programmes

We run a range of parent-led programmes aimed at providing support for parents in the everyday but not-always-easy job of being a parent. Many of these focus on supporting parents to build the extended support networks that other parents can take for granted. 

Young Dads Collective

The Young Dads Collective (YDC) works to improve the lives of young dads and their children by tackling the social exclusion that holds back young dads’ parenting skills and means. As experts by experience, the YDC’s young dads work with professionals to transform how organisations engage with young dads and overcome the hidden barriers that shut young dads out. The YDC directly employs and develops the skills of the collective’s young dads.

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Parent Champions

Parent Champions are parent volunteers who give a few hours a week to talk to other local parents about accessing childcare and other local family services. Coram Family and Childcare developed our Parent Champions programme to help parents who miss out on vital information. The Parent Champions model is delivered by parents for parents, with the support of a local authority, children’s centre or local community organisation

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Parent-led childcare

Parent-led childcare is not for profit childcare designed and co-delivered by parents, for parents. Coram Family and Childcare is working with the New Economics Foundation to develop a feasible model for piloting and expanding parent-led childcare in the UK.

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Our research and campaigns

Our research and advocacy focuses on making Britain as supportive of fulfilling family lives as possible, and on holding central and local government to account for doing all it can to remove barriers for families. 

By revealing new insights into family life in the UK and formulating innovative solutions, our research aims to push the envelope on how families are supported in the UK. One of our flagship research projects is an annual survey of childcare costs, providing government, parents and charities with a reliable indicator of what’s happening to the cost of childcare in Britain.

Explore our research