Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Children, Young People and Education Committee. We've received apologies for absence from Julie Morgan, and I'm very pleased to welcome David Rees, who is substituting for her today. Can I ask Members whether there are any declarations of interest, please? No. Okay. Thank you very much. Item 2 this morning, then, is a session with the Minister for Children and Social Care on the Welsh Government's childcare offer. So, I'm very pleased to welcome Huw Irranca-Davies, Minister for Children and Social Care, also Jo-Anne Daniels, director for communities and tackling poverty, and Owain Lloyd, deputy director for childcare, play and early years. So, thank you, all, for your attendance. If you're happy, we'll go straight into questions from Members, and the first questions come from Hefin David.
Good morning, Minister. How has it gone in the early implementer local authority areas, and is it something of a mixed bag?
It's gone well, but I'm glad we've done it through this process of early implementer, actually piloting it, because we're learning lessons as we go along. It has gone well. It's been encouraging, to the extent that we're at the point where we're expanding—we've made announcements on expanding some of the early implementer areas so we can learn more lessons. But, in terms of what we're learning, one is the bureaucracy around the current approach that we're taking, because it's being done on the seven early implementers. So, we're asking parents to come in, provide their wage slips, provide the birth certificates, and so on. You're dealing sometimes with parents and families with complex issues and complex backgrounds, so it's difficult. And the burden of administration on that is falling to each pilot area. In one case, it's a whole authority, but it's only one—that's in Blaenau Gwent. In others, it's smaller areas. So, we're also hitting those—. The other big challenge we're hitting is communication. So, we're having parents, generally, who are outside the areas entirely saying, 'Why haven't we got this yet? Can we please get into it?', which is encouraging. But the other thing we're having is people who are within pilot authorities, where it doesn't extend to the whole authority, saying, 'Well, hold on now, we think we qualify for something under universal care, we think we qualify for something on tax credits. Why don't we qualify for this?' 'Well, you're not in the pilot area.' So, we're learning about these things, but the biggest one, I have to say, is the administrative burden, and I think that's interesting in how we take this forward for a wider roll-out.
What is the administrative burden? What specifically is that?