Disadvantaged children risk being worse off under the government's childcare reforms, two national charities have claimed.
The plans, which were unveiled in Chancellor Jeremy Hunt's budget earlier this year, include a £4.1bn expansion in free childcare to provide 30 hours a week for working parents with children as young as nine months old in England.
It comes on top of current provision for those with three and four-year-olds.
But Coram Family and Childcare (CFC) and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) said, even with the extra investment, the changes "risk worsening outcomes for disadvantaged children" and were "unfairly targeted towards higher income families".
In a report on Thursday, the charities said the "complex and opaque" system did little to help lower income parents, who would end up with about £4 take-home pay an hour after additional childcare costs and the Universal Credit taper rate is applied.
