Free Early Education Funding for 3 and 4 year olds

A guide for Practitioners

Important Notice - Changes to Free Early Years Funding Process!

Download the Fair Processing Notice for Spring 2009

The Policy and Planning team can give advice and support on any query that you have relating to the free early years places for three and four year olds.

This could be:

• information regarding the payment of the grant to the settings e.g. the amount of grant made, timescales for completing the forms, when payments should have been received etc
• Query or information about the pathfinder project
• Offering the enhanced entitlement flexibly 
• if you think you have received the incorrect amount of grant
• for advice on filling out and completing the claim/census form and to find out more about the different formats in which this information can be entered.
• for notification of a change to bank details and contact details to which the claim/census forms are sent,
• if a child starts or leaves a setting after submission of claim/census form.

The Policy and Planning team can be contacted on (01904) 554208 or 554442.

Additional Resources

A new form has now been devised to claim for ‘Hard to Reach’ children taking up free early years places. The form is designed in the same way as the Children with Special Educational Needs form in order to help you claim additional sessions for ‘hard to reach’ children who attend your setting.

Claims process

• The Policy and Planning team will commence processing completed claims at the start of each term.
• Claims take around 10 working days to be processed from the date from which they are recieved by the team.
• The cut off date for paper adjustments is usually 1 week after the census date with a further 2 weeks allowance for telephone adjustments.
• The census date, which varies from term to term, is set by the Department for Children, Schools and Families.
• The onus is on you, the provider, to ensure that you apply for the funding for a child either on full term or half term basis. It is important you make parents aware or these cut off dates and conditions of moving their children from setting to setting.
  
  

Flexible Pathfinder Sustainability Pot

Introduction

The ‘New Flexible Extension to Entitlement for 3 & 4 Year olds’ Pathfinder award has presented York with a unique opportunity to ‘test’ the delivery of the extended 15 hours of free entitlement with enhanced flexibility, prior to its national roll-out in September 2010. As per last year, the additional funding that we have received from the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) for this financial year (March 08 to April 09) has enabled us to again offer a sustainability pot, to support providers in their development towards this extended flexible provision. We are encouraging all settings to consider parental needs within their locality, in conjunction with their local partnership providers, in order to assess the changes that might need to take place to meet the flexibility aspect of the project.


Applying to the Pot

This grant has been set up to support providers who are commencing offering the extended 15 hours free entitlement during this financial year (April 08 to March 09). The funding can be used to support any additional costs to facilitate these changes for example, needing to open at new times, for longer periods than currently open, funding meals or the cost of re-registration due to meeting Pathfinder aims.

Other examples that the sustainability pot may support include:

• minor building works and modifications
• the purchase of equipment and materials to set up the extended provision such as tables, chairs, fridges for lunch provision
• additional staffing costs involved in the initial stages of setting up extended provision
• initial planning / administration costs

This grant is also available to support those providers who are already part of the Pathfinder project but require additional support to enable them to offer the enhanced provision in a flexible manner that meets parents needs.

We recommend that all providers consider the following broad criteria and principles when considering making an application to this fund: 

• The enhanced flexible provision offered must reflect the needs of families and children within your locality. We expect sufficient consultation to have been undertaken with your parents/carers to identify their needs with regards to the free early years provision. Ideally, this consultation should be carried out alongside other providers within your local Shared Foundation Community Partnership, to ensure flexibility at a local level. 
• Application forms should clearly show that the funding would be used towards ensuring the delivery of high quality sustainable provision with quality resources in a quality childcare environment.
• We expect the Early Years Funding that you receive on a termly basis (i.e. £3.48 per child per hour) to be taken into account when you are identifying additional costs involved in extending your provision, particularly with regard to staffing costs. We would usually anticipate the extension of this termly funding from 12.5 hours to 15 hours to cover the majority, if not all of additional staff costs, unless you can demonstrate otherwise. 
• Finally, we strongly advise you to consider any changes within the context of them being sustainable post March 2009. All funds available this year are time limited and there is no guarantee that there will be any similar grants available 2009/2010.

Monitoring

If the application is approved, the applicant must retain evidence that the grant has been spent in accordance with the application. Such evidence must be submitted if required by a representative of City of York Council.

 

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