New Income Opportunities for Childcare Charity

Bidding for new work is now a lot easier thanks to a KTP programme with LSBU

Daycare Trust, the national childcare charity that campaigns for high quality, accessible, and affordable childcare, has taken on a KTP project with LSBU to create and embed a new quantitative skill-set in-house which will enable collection, modeling, analysis and evaluation of datasets to implement ongoing new business practices. Daycare Trust currently has limited quantitative research skills and capabilities in its existing staff team. “This restricts our ability to bid for work which either has a quantitative element, or which entails secondary analysis of large datasets even if we can undertake part of the work. It also restricts our ability, on occasion, to undertake authoritative analysis of certain Government data,” reports Kate Groucutt Policy Director at Daycare Trust.

This KTP partnership will enable the Trust to pursue new income opportunities by offering customers a mixed methods approach that is both qualitative and quantitative, eliminating the existing knowledge gap. “This project will ensure we develop into a more dynamic and credible research unit, ultimately ensuring our position as a leading research provider and authoritative voice on childcare issues within both the public and political spheres,” predicts Kate.

Daycare Trust needs to be ahead of the game due to rising costs from third party quantitative services and the ever increasing competition from organisations which are able to include quantitative research skills as part of their bids. With a KTP on board new opportunities for the Trust will be created including enhancing the capacity to bid for a wider range of research and consultancy work, generating more income and reducing dependency upon third-party suppliers. KTP Associate Ben Evans says “It is essential, now more than ever, that campaigning organisations posses well developed and holistic research capabilities.”

LSBU academic Ros Edwards, who specialises in Social and Policy Research, is identifying and implementing relevant software to support quantitative research activities whilst also appraising, identifying, analysing and exploiting the existing relevant statistical data. “Working with Ben, we are able to help the Daycare Trust extend their methods skills set. In turn we at LSBU are gaining insights into the conduct of research in a voluntary organisation which is helping us deliver appropriate Masters training in research methods to students who are often working in the third sector,” comments Ros.

As a direct result of this project the trust will become more competitive by offering an improved and more comprehensive range of services for customers. Additionally they will be more commercially stable as a result of becoming less dependent upon grant funding and will be well placed to expand their influence on political discourse concerning childcare issues. “Daycare Trust will be recognized as a beacon of authoritative knowledge on childcare issues,” says Ben.