The Alliance is worried that the changes coming in from August requiring early years settings to carry out more admin to in order to receive a third of a pint of milk each day for children in their care for free will mean many withdraw from the scheme.
Consequently, it says that nurseries may end up buying the milk themselves, creating an additional financial burden, or , for settings that cannot afford the extra cost, children will have to go without.
It is understood the proposed move, which providers are being asked their opinions on in the form of a survey, is to reduce fraudulent claims and/or errors in claims.
Comments on social media from staff working in early years settings suggest the majority are against the planned move, with many saying that the change will mean they no longer give children in their care milk to drink.
From August, early years settings that participate in the Government’s free milk scheme, which is operated by the Nursery Milk Reimbursement Unit (NMRU), will be required to:
- Upload a redacted copy of their attendance registers onto their online Nursery Milk account, showing the date, child name (crossed out for confidentiality), date of birth and hours of attendance.
- Note any child who was unexpectedly absent (generally due to sickness) but for whom milk was ordered.
In his letter to the health minister Maggie Throup, Neil Leitch, chief executive of the Early Years Alliance, states, ‘As you may be aware, the early years sector is in the midst of a severe recruitment and retention crisis.
Given this, we are extremely concerned that the proposed changes to the Nursery Milk Scheme will place an unnecessary additional burden on an already overworked, overwhelmed and under-resourced workforce. In turn, our fear is that this will force many settings to withdraw from the scheme, which will either create an extra financial burden for those who opt to buy their milk privately, or risk the loss of an important source of health and nutrition for children at settings who cannot afford to do so.
‘I am aware that Government has advised that providers can upload a redacted version of electronic registers, but even this will take time that these settings simply do not have – and of course, is of no help to any setting that do not have registers in this format.
‘While the reason that has been given for this change is to reduce the change of fraud and/or errors in claims, I am not aware of any statistics or figures that have been released to suggest that these scale of such issues warrants this approach.'