As before, settings will be able to fill out an online questionnaire, settings will receive a diagnosis and advice on how to improve the health of their business.
The consultancy behind the venture, Flourishing People, agreed to upgrade the service before the major childcare charity’s closure was announced.
The 4Children Business Skills Support Hub and Business Healthcheck Tool were set up in 2012, using funding from the DfE.
Jacqui Burke, director of Flourishing People, said, ‘Unfortunately one of the things that happened because 4Children haven’t had enough funding, is a lot of the features on the website weren’t being maintained.
‘I’ll be relaunching it as a Flourishing People service and we’ve been given access to all the existing information.’
Ms Burke said she was not aware of any similar online tool, adding, ‘The thing people like about the business healthcheck tool, is it’s a really easy for a setting which just wants to take the temperature and get a feel for where their setting is from a business point of view, and it signposts and makes suggestions for how to make improvements.’
She explained that students on her Childcare Business Advisers Programme have found the resource very useful and added, ‘I was determined that the time and money invested in creating this valuable set of resources shouldn’t be allowed to simply disappear with the closure of 4Children.’
Questions cover key areas such as marketing and finance, and the tool returns a score for each category, along with an overall profile.
The URL of the website has yet to be confirmed.
The collapse of 4Children, which was one of the country’s biggest childcare charities providing thousands of low-income families with nursery, wraparound and parenting services, was announced last month.
The organisation was the Government’s official early years strategic partner and these services, including the Foundation Years website, are continuing at Action for Children’s Holborn headquarters.
Most of its nurseries, including those serving the RAF, will also transfer to Action for Children, with some being taken back in-house by local authorities.
Some 85 members of staff were due to be made redundant, with 727 due to move to Action for Children, and 207 going to a local authority or other provider.