The accessing childcare team is starting private beta work on a service to help parents and guardians understand what early education and childcare support they may be entitled to.
Our aim is to launch a private beta MVP in August 2026.
This work sits within a complex landscape of childcare services and content across DfE, HMRC, DWP, GDS and local authorities.
The Giving every child the best start in life strategy, published in July 2025, sets out an aim to simplify this landscape:
“To deliver our long‑term ambition of comprehensive reform, we will work across government to design and deliver a simpler system to make it easier for families to access early education and childcare.” “To deliver our long‑term ambition of comprehensive reform, we will work across government to design and deliver a simpler system to make it easier for families to access early education and childcare.”
During discovery and alpha, we focused on understanding more about this problem. We also explored whether a digital service could improve how parents access government‑funded childcare.
The problem we are trying to solve
Research in discovery and alpha consistently showed that the current journey for parents and guardians is confusing, fragmented and hard to trust. Information about childcare support is spread across online locations and often uses inconsistent language and scheme names.
Existing online tools do not give a complete or reliable picture of what support is available.
As a result:
parents struggle to understand what support exists or which support they can access
they find it difficult to apply eligibility rules to their own circumstances
people with changing or less common situations are at greater risk of being excluded or misled
some parents do not apply for support they are entitled to, or give up due to confusion
This disproportionately affects parents who:
are time‑poor
are less confident
have low literacy or digital literacy
have limited support networks
have more nuanced circumstances such as variable income, caring responsibilities or being on parental leave
This creates a risk that families who most need support are less able to understand or access it.
Who the service is for
Our primary users are parents and carers of children under 5 in England, including expectant parents, who are:
planning or considering the use of formal childcare
experiencing a change in circumstances, for example income, work status or family situation
Research showed that these groups would find a checker most useful when they are trying to decide whether childcare is viable for their family.
We also identified secondary users, including local authority and family hub staff. They are often involved in supporting parents to understand entitlements and can be affected by inconsistent or unclear information.
What we explored in alpha
In alpha we explored several potential ways of supporting parents, including:
a financial calculator
automated chatbot‑style support
an entitlement checker
To understand gaps in existing user journeys, we also:
reviewed existing tools, including the Best Start in Life and GOV.UK checkers
mapped eligibility rules across all major schemes
tested concepts with parents in a range of circumstances
A financial calculator would address the need for parents to understand the financial costs of childcare for their family when using different schemes. However, it would not help address issues of understanding what they might be entitled to. Research and feasibility work also highlighted extreme difficulties in gathering enough data to support accurate results.
When exploring chatbot‑style support, research showed parents needed clarity and certainty rather than conversational guidance. Users wanted to see how answers affected eligibility across schemes, and this approach risked increasing cognitive load for less confident users. It would also rely on the user to have some existing awareness of schemes available to them. When reviewing existing childcare checker tools in detail we identified that they either:
do not cover all 5 main entitlements
provide results that are too limited or unclear
This makes it difficult for parents to plan or compare options confidently.
Research showed that:
parents trust information provided on GOV.UK
a checker is most valuable when people are planning ahead or experiencing change
existing checkers exclude some groups, such as expectant parents or those on certain benefits
parents want clear, tailored results they can relate to their own situation
This exploration helped narrow the options we should take forward into private beta.
What we decided
Based on the evidence from discovery and alpha, we decided to start building an entitlement checker as the first service in private beta.
We decided to do this because it:
directly meets the strongest and most consistently evidenced user needs
improves on existing tools by covering all 5 main entitlements
supports parents to understand eligibility now and in the future
The checker is intended to:
ask a series of structured questions
provide tailored, estimated results
explain what support may apply and why
signpost clearly to next steps and further help
We should also be clear that results are not guarantees and that the service does not replace applications or other decision‑making processes.
Working across government on childcare content
We also identified issues that could not be addressed through the checker alone.
A cross‑government content audit conducted by our team highlighted inconsistent language, scheme names and rule descriptions. This included GOV.UK guidance and campaign content. Even where information is accurate, differences in explanations are confusing. This affects how parents understand support and how schemes relate to each other.
To address this, we set up a cross‑government childcare content working group, bringing together content and policy colleagues across departments. The group exists to align language and messaging, reduce duplication, and improve clarity and consistency for users.
This work will run alongside the accessing childcare service development.
Defining and designing our private beta MVP
Our initial focus is on defining and testing a minimum viable product (MVP) for the entitlement checker that:
works for parents with a range of circumstances
does not exclude people with changing or nuanced situations
is clear, accessible and trustworthy
reduces cognitive load compared to existing journeys
Private beta will allow us to:
continue testing assumptions with real users
improve how we ask sensitive or complex questions
refine how results are presented and explained
understand how the checker fits within the wider childcare content landscape
In private beta we are not only testing whether the checker is technically accurate, but whether it works for parents who are hesitant, time‑poor or uncertain, as well as those who are confident and self‑directed.
Future design history posts will document how we develop and iterate specific parts of the service.