Parents at the Centre, published ahead of deputy prime minister Nick Clegg's social mobility strategy expected on Tuesday, says the extension of the free entitlement to all disadvantaged two-year-olds will only help improve social mobility if the take-up of places and quality of provision is improved.
The Government aims to increase the number of places for disadvantaged two-year-olds from 20,000 to 130,000 by 2013.
The report seeks to find out why use of the free entitlement is lowest among parents in disadvantaged families.
It recommends that outreach workers should be protected from local authority spending cuts and viewed as the 'first frontline' to help encourage low-income families to use their free offer.
It also suggests that, considering the success of 'conditional cash transfers' in Brazil and Mexico, local authorities should pilot cash payments to encourage low-income families to use their entitlement.
The findings, based on interviews with low-income parents, suggest that many parents would not generally use the free entitlement without encouragement.
Generally, parents did not see the 15 hours as a way of helping them to work because the hours were not considered long enough or flexible enough. Parents were also reluctant to pay for additional hours.
Location was also an issue, with parents preferring provision to be within walking distance.
Most parents also felt that before the age of two, children should be cared for by their families and not be in formal childcare. Typically, they believed that young children should be looked after by family members.
Those families with two-year-olds were also less likely to know that free childcare places were available to them.
IPPR director Nick Pearce said, 'Expanding early years provision is an important objective but will only increase social mobility if the places are of high quality and parents take them up. Otherwise, the money will be largely wasted.'
