SHE has been named one of the 10 most influential people in childcare and was picked to advise David Cameron on the issue.

But Cheryl Hadland says she only got into the industry because she couldn’t find the kind of care she needed herself.

She set up the first Tops Day Nursery in Herbert Avenue, Rossmore, 27 years ago. It is now one of 19 across the south.

Boscombe-based Hadland Care Group has two other businesses: Reside Care Homes, which she set up after looking for a care home for her stepfather, and Aspire Training Team, which runs courses and apprenticeships.

In 1990, she was running Poole Dive Centre, but finding flexible childcare was difficult. “Play schools were offering 9am-12. That’s not enough for a working parent,” she says.

“Even now, most nurseries are open 8am-6pm and that’s it. You can make more money doing that but it’s not about the money.”

Her nurseries, which include one at Royal Bournemouth Hospital, open at 6am. “It enables people to go to hospital, where your shift might start at 7am,” she says.

Providing childcare at a price parents can afford is difficult, she argues. Forty hours of childcare cost around £200.

“It’s a big chunk of money out of a young family. It may be the entire wage for one of the couple, for one child,” she says.“Some people say ‘That’s a parent’s choice to have children’ but if people don’t have children, who’s going to pay our pensions when we’re older?”

Delivering the 30 hours a week of free childcare that the government promised working parents is difficult on the money provided, she suggests. “We’re in survival mode. I’m determined we will carry on providing childcare and I’m very grateful the government is going to pay us £4 an hour to provide that. It’s going to cost me £5 an hour and I need to find the missing £1.”

Many nurseries pulled out of the initiative. “I think that’s a mistake. I think we should be totally behind the government and parents and work with the additional challenge around it to make it work,” she adds.

“We will do our utmost to provide childcare as cheaply as we possibly can and as well as we possibly can.”

Doing that while paying a reasonable wage is tough. “We’re talking quite a culture change if we want to pay our early years teachers more. We need to work out how to do that. We are the most underfunded early years sector in the OECD countries, not something the UK should be proud of.”

Cheryl was recently named one of the 10 most influential people in childcare by Nursery Management Today and was runner-up for the top spot when it put to a vote of her peers.

Previously she was one of David Cameron’s “early years trailblazers”, chairing a group of 10. She left the post when the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) insisted all child carers should have GCSE English and maths.

“A guy at the DfES said ‘We want to get the dross out of your sector and we’re prepared to have two or three years of pain to do that’.

“I was totally horrified. It was disgraceful. People won’t be recruited because people won’t be able to get on a career path,” she says.

“I’m happy to have people who are useless at quadratic equations look after my under-fives and other people’s under-fives as well. I need people who are really caring and empathic and can speak and communicate well.”

While building her businesses, the 56-year-old boss has raised three children and a stepson, most of the time as a single mother, and has been a foster parent.

She gained a masters degree at 40 and has pursued a busy programme of voluntary work – teaching scuba diving, fundraising for families in distress and establishing an environmental charity, GECCO. “I’ve got two grandchildren and I want to do my best to make sure they don’t live in a polluted world,” she says.

Some staff have been with the business for the full 27 years and many have gone on to senior roles and extra qualifications. “We’re very good at helping people get self-esteem and self-respect, particularly if they’ve been battered at school,” she says.

She says she still empathises with the people who use her childcare.

“Parents feel guilty when they leave their children in childcare. A lot of people cry – I had a dad cry the other day when he left his child in the nursery and I cried when I left my own child in my own nursery.

“Its natural, but we take quick videos of the children playing happily a minute or two later and send them to parents so they can work, happy that their children are having fun and learning with other small children.

“You should see the letters from parents. We get some wonderful thank-you letters.”