Sue Owen

Director of the Early Childhood Unit National Children’s Bureau, England.

I feel as if I have been researching childminding in various ways all my life. I first started working with childminders in Manchester, England in 1974 and I still have some questionnaires and taped interviews from that time. In 1977 I went to live in California, USA and also interviewed family child care providers there. Later I went to work for the National Childminding Association as Information Officer and then research was actually part of my job description. In NCMA we mostly collected data through annual surveys of members and of local authority childminding workers, because we would have been seen as a self-interested organisation if we had done evaluations or research studies of our own.

Most recently, however, in my job at the National Children’s Bureau, I have been able to do a study for NCMA on the effectiveness of childminding networks in supporting improved practice for childminders. This showed that the network model had made some dramatic changes for childminders in England, and we made 20 recommendations for policy and practice changes and for further research which should be done (www.ncma.org.uk).

I am also fascinated by the history of childminding and, as part of my doctoral dissertation, I did original research into the history of the profession in Britain. It’s a good thing that it took me so long to get my dissertation written because I was able to include materials from various stages of my life as well as from historical sources!

In 1985 I was one of the initiators of IFDCO (International Family Day Care Organisation) and in 1987 I was one of the organisers of the very first international family day care conference in Cardiff, Wales.

You can contact Sue directly at: sowen@ncb.org,uk

Some of Sue’s publications on childminding:

Owen, S. (1985) “Working with Childminders” in Hughes, M. and Kennedy, M. (eds) New Futures: Changing Women’s Education; London: RKP. Owen, S. (1988) “The Unobjectionable Service: A Legislative History of Childminding” Children and Society; Vol. 2, No. 4.

Owen, S. (1991) “The Advantages and Disadvantages of an Organised System of Family Day Care” in Peeters, J., Braam, J. and Van den Heede, R. (eds) Family Day Care provider: Teacher or Substitute Mother? Gent: VBJK. Owen, S. (2000) “Assessing Quality in Childminding” Children & Society; Vol. 14, No. 2.

Owen, S. (2003) “Sharing the Caring: The Development of Childminding Networks in Britain” in Mooney, A. and Statham, J. (eds) Future Directions for Family Day Care: International Perspectives on Policy, Practice and Quality; London: Jessica Kingsley.

Owen, S. (2005) Children Come First: the Future of Childminding Networks; Bromley: National Childminding Association.