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Do we know yet who is offering the 30 free hours? Not just us childminders but nurseries and pre-schools?
If its being rolled out in September it seems incredibly last minute for settings not to know yet?
What are childminders and nurseries doing around you?
The nursery near me is offering 30 hours but only to 23 children and allocating spaces to the oldest children in nursery
Local preschools are generally offering 30hrs (or as many hours as they can)Quote:
Originally Posted by mumofone
My local school isn't. I don't know about other local schools. I'm not and I'm not aware that I know any childminders that are.
My LA is an 'early implementer' and start 30hrs this term.
The pre schools I go to aren't offering. I'm not even considering it until our LA begin paying monthly and even then I'm still not sure x
I intend to offer the 30 hours, but there's very little information or help. The LA is taking its usual high-handed approach and wondering why this is proving counter-productive.
They set up 'briefing sessions' at inconvenient times and places, meaning CMs have to lose a day's work to attend, so you can probably guess the take-up rate. They followed up with a stroppy email that anyone who failed to attend a briefing session would not be allowed to become a 30 hours provider. Fine, we said, do your worst and you'll have no participating providers. They have since backed down.
Locally they're struggling to get CMs to offer 15 hours, never mind 30. Most preschools offer 25 hours, but don't open enough to bother with the 30. All the nurseries offer 15 and some, not all, plan to offer 30. But I can't gauge what proportion will offer the full 30.
The LA is encouraging settings to get together to make partnership arrangements, to offer 30 hours as a package across two settings. That doesn't seem to be going too well, because they all want the universal 15 hours for themselves (simpler to administrate, with payment guaranteed) but want a CM to pick up the additional hours, since that involves checking entitlement codes, etc.
That's something I've been thinking about lately - who is going to get the universal 15 hours and who is going to be left with the additional 15. I can see that causing issues.Quote:
Originally Posted by bunyip
I will be offering the 30 hours funding, but initially only to existing children. I'll have one next January so at least there will have been a few months to see how it's all working. The rate is slightly less than my current rate, but I'll be able to make that up with a charge for lunch. At some point I think the parents will want to split their 30 hours between me and another setting. As I'll have been the first to claim it, I will probably tell parents that I will keep the universal 15 hours and they will have to use their additional hours for the other setting.
I have considered only offering funding places in the future so, term time only and 9-3 each day. I want to keep my hand in with funding now in case I decide to go down that route ant some point.
I am anticipating a little difficulty not from the LA, but from the private nursery school a LO who comes to me one day, attends.
She lives out of my LA but reciprocal arrangements meant she was funded last year as a 3 year old by my LA.
In Sept mum decided to use her 15 hours funding with the nursery as they cost more and she paid me, first for two days and then since Christmas just for one, as she was offered another day at the nursery and her peers here had gone to school.
Her LA are starting funding 30 hours this term, mine is not. The private nursery have said they are not accessing the extra funding but suggest parents go to other providers if they want to access it. So mum asked that the one day she comes to me be funded. My LA say I just fill in headcount as she is already on books from last year, her LA say that the private nursery would have to access the extended funding as I can only access original 15 hour 3/4 funding from my LA until September.
I have read the info online and the nursery said they are not accessing the extended funding for any child. I wonder if this is their statement so they are just sticking with 15 hours and charging for remainder or are not getting involved in any extended funding paperwork?
We shall see, I am going to claim 8 hours, put the nursery down as sharing it and see where we go, even though I know they should be accessing the extended funding not the original, as I have claimed 8 hours of it and their LA are dealing with the two sections of funding separately.
I've always had a sneaky feeling that lines get blurred when working cross counties and we both could end up accessing the original 15 hours without anyone batting an eye lid. I wait to see.