Ms Fiona McDonnell:

On feeding back information from inspection, the early years inspectorate has a strong governance structure. The information comes from the inspectors to the managers and across to the Department. Every year, we undertake research. We carry out an analysis of the inspection report and we are able to identify the areas of weakness in the context of compliance with regulation. This feeds over to the Department of Children and Youth Affairs. For example, in 2016, under the new regulations, we undertook an analysis of the 3,000 inspection reports that existed at that time. One of the areas that providers were struggling with was that of outdoor play. We were able to feed that finding back to the Department, which then provided capital funding. It is important that we analyse our inspection reports every year. We share that information, it is on our website. We meet registered providers and we do road shows every two years. We have undertaken surveys with our providers as well. It is important to us that we share the information.

We established the consultative forum in 2015. This is made up of many stakeholders. Any policy that is developed is reviewed by the consultative forum and we make changes based on its advices. The big piece that we have done in the past two years is the development of the quality and regulatory framework. The quality and regulatory framework is a document that shows, for registered providers, parents and students who are studying early childhood care and education in the colleges, the regulations in a very clear and concise way. The framework is available on our website. The website also contains additional links by means of which more information is provided. The information is there. The difficulty we had was in terms of trying to contact parents directly. As a result, we established the regulatory support forum, which comprises the county childcare committees, the Department's Better Start quality development service, etc. We go through all of our processing in the context of registering a service and what is required in regulation so that those involved are informed. They are the people, the development workers in the local areas, who will give the information to parents and providers.

This year, we are carrying out research for parents. We have been involved in a great deal of consultation with parents and we asked them what they want from the inspectorate and what information they want from it. We will publish that soon. We are trying to layer it and to get as many messages in different forums in regard to it.

On the quality and regulatory framework, at the end of this year we will have training available to all providers, including ICT and e-learning training. We will also have podcasts. We are doing a big piece of work in this area. Parents can undertake that training as well.

That will also be available on our website. We are trying many different ways to contact parents. In addition to our quarterly newsletter, we send out letters to providers. It is very important that we do more than just inspect, that our relationships are not only with the providers, and that we get this message out. We work quite hard in that regard.