Improving children’s outcomes when child poverty is high is a tall order at the best of times. With 49 per cent of Tower Hamlets children living below the poverty line, the pressures on this London borough to provide high-quality early years services is high.
That was ramped up yet further when the Early Years National Funding Formula (EYNFF) was unveiled last year. This was despite the EYNFF offering the local authority among the highest rates nationally of £8.51 per hour (although down from £8.96 the year before), simply because the cost burden of providing the care far outstrips the income.
Debbie Jones, Tower Hamlets’ corporate director of children’s services, was left wondering how they would continue to meet the needs of thousands of the borough’s ‘very vulnerable families’. However, after the local authority made a case to the Department for Education to opt out of parts of the EYNFF legislation, it was granted a one-year reprieve and is now able to continue to offer the places in the short term. The local authority, which in April became one of four additional areas piloting the 30 hours, already has a scheme to fund full-time childcare for its most disadvantaged three- and four- year-olds. This means that, of a total of 4,000 children in this age group, around half have been receiving 25 hours per week of funded term-time care. This is made up of the 15 hours entitlement, plus five hours’ lunch supervision provided by the school and 10 hours’ LA top-up.
Around 2,000 full-time places offered at 65 schools (primary schools with nursery and Reception classes, and maintained nursery schools) had been in jeopardy of being cut to just 200 this year, before the local authority went through the process of ‘disapplication’. Disapplication means keeping aside more than the maximum 7 per cent of the funding that the councils now have to pass on because of exceptional circumstances, and can be controversial for this reason.
However, the EYNFF would have caused ‘significant disruption to inclusion’, says Pauline Hoare, the council’s lead officer for early years. ‘Annually we support 400 children through the EY Inclusion Advisory Service and 30 children are supported through grants to PVI settings (for additional staffing support, specialised equipment, adaptations to buildings). As there is no identified funding to provide for emerging SEN [special educational needs], we were concerned that we would be unable to provide this service in the future. We currently also offer teacher-led SEN transition and planning for the unique needs of each child attending a PVI setting. This would have had to cease without disapplication.’
The team had to convince the DfE of the significant threat posed to full-time places (outside the national entitlements), as well as services catering for SEN. It also had to demonstrate that such a manoeuvre would not jeopardise its free entitlement delivery. ‘What parents have told us they need is full-time school provision,’ says Ms Hoare, stressing the council has modelled services based on what parents have asked for.
At present, 80 per cent of all disadvantaged Tower Hamlets children in this age bracket and those identified with SEN are in full-time nursery places. Around 75 per cent of total provision is offered in school settings and the remaining children are either in private settings or not at school. ‘We have a very high [level] of teacher-led provision for three-year-olds,’ continues Ms Hoare. ‘The council supports this early intervention because local socio-demographic issues, linked with few families speaking English, means full-time provision helps children become school ready. It’s not going to be possible [to offer the current level and quality of provision] going forward. We’ve found money to fund it for two to three years, but there’ll come a time where there isn’t any more.’
As part of the Government requirements, the council is required to show that it will be ready for the EYNFF by 2020, and in September it will reduce the proportion of children receiving the top-up, from 80 per cent of those in schools to 60 per cent. This will go down to 40 per cent next September. In addition, having been involved in the pilot since April is helping the team ensure there will be enough places across all kinds of setting to meet demand for the 30 hours – which operates on completely different criteria – from September. To this end, the team decided to focus on working with daycare and childminder providers to develop wraparound care. So far, just under 300 children have been receiving these extra hours. These families have been drawn from the existing pool receiving 15 hours under the universal entitlement.
NOT ELIGIBLE
The settings involved are in areas of deprivation, by default, but many of the families are so deprived they don’t qualify. The scheme’s earnings criteria state that each parent must work at least the equivalent of 16 hours a week at the National Minimum Wage, earning up to a maximum of £200,000, or £100,000 for a single-parent family. Tower Hamlets Council leader John Biggs has called it a ‘shame that the Government isn’t extending this support to parents who are actively looking for work too’. Indeed, the council estimates that just a quarter of the 4,000 children would be eligible for the 30 hours.
Ms Hoare says, ‘Our challenge as a local authority is to get people work-ready earlier, so they can be eligible,’ she says. It would benefit more families if the DfE were to include parents who are on accredited courses that will lead to employment – a category expressly excluded at present, she points out. She and colleagues also have ‘some concerns’ about employers not providing the right paperwork, meaning that parents who would otherwise qualify don’t appear on the DfE’s Childcare Choices eligibility website. And if, for example, a parent is offered a job in September, the system as it stands builds in an eligibility delay until the following term, in this case starting in January. ‘We believe that parents would like their entitlement to start at the same time as their eligibility,’ says Ms Hoare. ‘We have suggested this to DfE colleagues.’
Ms Hoare adds that within the pilot, the council has been working with providers to ‘develop and test different delivery models’, including ‘blended offers’ with childminders, breakfast and after-school clubs. On top of this, the borough has been continuing to offer intensive business support to providers. She continues, ‘Over the summer, we will be preparing for the full roll-out in September, and as part of that will be looking at the best ways to talk to our local communities, including harder-to-reach audiences. We will definitely be using our network of 12 children’s centres to help communicate the changes as widely as possible.’
CASE STUDY: LIMEHOUSE ARCHES NURSERY
Situated beneath the arches of the Docklands Light Railway in Limehouse, and open from 7am to 7pm for 51 weeks of the year, this daycare provider says educating parents about the 30 hours is so far going ‘really well’. Deputy manager Penny Cornwell says they have been busy getting the word out that they are offering the extra entitlement.
‘We’re advertising, we’ve put leaflets in the health centres. People who are eligible don’t realise they need the code from the government website to claim it, and we’re helping them to go onto the site and download it.’
She says that the setting, which has 42 children on roll, is facing stiff competition from schools, many of which are lowering their age of intake.
‘The schools are taking them earlier and earlier, so we need to be competitive and get the word out,’ she continues. ‘I tell everyone I see. It’s a big change, but you just have to deal with it.’
Double time
James Hempsall, who has the contract to aid delivery of the 30 hours, talks poverty
Early years and childcare should be a double deal – early learning for pre-school children, and childcare for working families, or parents undertaking work-related activities (including training for work). But as Tower Hamlets reminds us, activities to counter poverty is our third outcome.
Getting people work-ready is vitally important. Work is by far the most effective route out of poverty, but the money needs to add up. There are far more lower-income families within the criteria than there are higher*. Which is important to state, as the upper income limit on the eligibility has become a bit of a distraction for many.
Different local areas have different amounts of childcare available. In some, PVIs are by far the largest supplier; in others, it is schools. And like the flexibility that PVIs have developed over recent years, schools need to think again about their entrenched models.
Key to this is the joining up of morning and afternoon sessions with lunchtimes that meet the staffing and quality requirements of the EYFS. This is an opportunity to change that should be well and truly grasped. And with 75 per cent of provision in schools in Tower Hamlets, the area has a fantastic opportunity to remodel from their universal and extended offer to one that meets the 30-hours criteria and draws down additional government funding through the authority and into schools’ and PVI providers’ budgets.
Out-of-school providers and childminders, in particular, have a new and unique opportunity to become part of this delivery. Many may not be aware of such funding and 30 hours – they could be out of the loop of LA communications as many will not be on local directories of funded providers.
The 30 hours is a vital part of us all supporting families into work. It is a reward and an incentive, and requires us all to be focused on this aim. In Tower Hamlets, it is clear that children’s centres are playing their part too.
*In April 2016, median gross weekly earnings for full-time employees were £539, according to the ONS.