• With regards to the delivery of 30 free hours of childcare, what is the per child per hour funding arrangement with the local authority from government, including for children with special educational needs and who speak English as a second language.
Devon received £4.30 per hour and does not qualify for any of the additional EAL, /SEN supplements that formed part of the DfE funding for the Early Years Block within the Dedicated Schools Grant. However, the High Needs Block does fund £350K towards Early Years SEND.
• With regards to the delivery of 30 free hours of childcare, of your funding arrangement with government, how much per hour per child will be provided to childcare settings in the local authority area, including for children with special educational needs and who speak English as a second language.
From September 2017 Devon will fund £4.02 per hour to providers to include Universal SEND of 4p per hour to enable settings to manage low level and emerging needs.
We are also introducing a targeted SEND scheme for settings with a higher % of 2 year olds and EYPP children.
Individual SEND applications for children with high needs will be allocated a termly lump sum for which we have 3 different levels.
• With regards to the delivery of 30 free hours of childcare, how many places for children are required within the local authority area.
We are unable to say how many places are required as we do not yet know what the demand for provision from parents will be. For example, we don’t know the times or locations where parents will want their childcare. Some parents choose childcare closer to work whilst others choose childcare closer to home. Some will want it somewhere between the two.
Work times differ and demand in some areas may be for more hours between 6am and 12am whilst in other areas the demand may be for later in the day. Much will depend on the types of work being carried out by parents and whether they are 9-5pm, working shifts or irregular hours. We do not know how many parents work part time and how many work full time, so the number of hours they will choose to access a place will vary.
There will be parents who choose to continue using family and friends for their childcare rather than a formal childcare setting too.
We do not receive information on which parents are eligible for the extended entitlement. There will be some parents that return to work and others will increase their working hours and some non-working households may return to work as a result of this new entitlement. This will all impact on the demand for places.
We hold data on the population of 3 and 4 year olds and also on where childcare providers are.
• With regards to the delivery of 30 free hours of childcare, how many places for children have been created within the local authority area.
We monitor the opening and closing of funded providers (as well as changes to opening times), however, it is impossible to say how many ‘places’ have been created as a result of the extended entitlement because:
· We do not know how providers will model their places/ offer (this may also change depending on demand throughout the year)
· Some providers may say they are not offering the 30 hour extended entitlement but they will be admitting children for part of the 1140 hours
· The definition of a ‘place’ is not clear
· We expect more children to access the extended entitlement between two or more different providers.
· Many providers determine their business model and react to business demand without informing the Local Authority.
In January we will analyse data from providers and will be able to give a full time equivalent place number, however, this will not reflect the number of children accessing a provision nor will it show when the funded hours are available