Incentivising Funding
The Incentivising Funding is only available for providers that remain open to provide childcare for critical workers children and vulnerable children for group settings (private, voluntary and independent, pre-schools and day nurseries) and childminders.
Funding for Schools, Academies and Out of School providers will be through the Grant Application process (details to follow).
The Incentivising Funding will cover a 12-week period starting from 23rd March 2020.
It is not a loan and is not dependent on you accessing any other Government support that is available.
Completion of the DfE survey is a condition of accessing Incentivising Funding as we need to submit data on Monday and Thursday each week. The new Survey has been simplified and allows for an attendance register to be completed easily so we encourage providers to submit this daily. The incentivising funding claim will be reduced for any weeks in which the survey has not been completed.
You will need a Parent/Carer Declaration Form to be completed for each child booked in or attending your setting once in the 12-week period regardless of how many days/weeks are booked/attended. The Declaration can be emailed to and from your parents for completion. An email response from a parent with the Parent/Carer Declaration attached is sufficient.
You will need to confirm what evidence you have seen of the critical worker parent (badge/wage slip) to confirm employment and record this on the Declaration Form.
You will not record vulnerable children information on the Parent Declaration Form but will need to keep records and be able to evidence vulnerability.
Parent/Carer Declarations will be kept at the setting but may be requested for audit and monitoring purposes.
You will need to complete a 4 weekly Incentivising Claim to confirm which children have booked and/or attended each week you are open. The claim includes instructions on how it needs to be completed and the deadlines for each claim. Once complete it should be emailed to eycs@devon.gov.uk for processing.
A child who has booked a space and then cancels at short notice should still be included on the claim and recorded as “Booked”. We would not expect a child to be “Booked” in every week and not “Attend”. You should not record children that were “Booked” before the closedown period if they do not require childcare.
Once an Incentivising Claim has been received payments will be processed within 7-10 working days if you are already set-up to receive payments from Devon County Council. If you do not currently receive payments from Devon County Council you will be contacted to provide your bank account details.
Incentivising Claims may be checked against your DfE data return, attendance registers and vulnerable children records for audit and monitoring purposes.
If there is a discrepancy found between children booked/attending and the claims made, the Incentivising Funding will be recovered.
Some of you will be accessing the Job Retention Scheme, Self Employment Income Support Scheme, and may be eligible for Business Rates Holidays and / or Business Support Grant or be discussing these schemes with your landlords if you are paying rents for premises.
We understand that each setting has different overheads and will be operating differently during this time, some of you will have the security of receiving Early Years Education Funding and others will be losing a lot of parent fee income. Whilst we have this funding available, we want to ensure that we can use it as widely as possible to support as many providers as we can. Therefore, you should select the level of incentivising funding that you wish to claim; it will be paid at either £100, £150 or £200 per child.
Following the Government Guidance, as providers prepare for wider opening from 1 June, we may see an increase in attendance and claims as parents return to work and use childcare. If this is significant, we may need to limit the level of funding available for Claim 3. We will not fund children that are not within the Critical Worker and Vulnerable categories when children re-join in June.
The amount per child is based on a provider being open for the 4-week period and the child attending every week. A pro-rata amount will be paid based on the weeks a setting is open and a child is booked or in attendance, e.g. £150 for a child on the first claim if the setting was close for half-term.
Group providers will be capped at £10,000 in the 12-week period (£3333 per month).
Childminders will be capped at £3,000 in the 12-week period (£1000 per month).
Devon County Council is committed to the prevention, detection and investigation of any allegations or indications of fraud and will seek to apply criminal, disciplinary, regulatory and civil sanctions where allegations are proven. Therefore, you should be aware that if you make a statement which you know to be false or do not believe to be true to the best of your knowledge then you may potentially commit a criminal offence.
This is Pandemic Funding (not from the Dedicated Schools Grant) and has been approved to acknowledge the additional costs that providers may incur during the COVID-19 period for some of the following reasons:
- Planning staff around pupil numbers and being flexible to parents changing work patterns
- Working on a higher ratio to ensure children can use the space available and meet social distancing requirements
- Dealing with new parent enquiries where other settings have closed
- Settling in children that are moving settings due to provider closure
- Meeting the needs of those vulnerable children who may require more support
- Increase to cleaning requirements to minimise risks
The furloughing announcement on Friday says that providers should look at the % of income from Early Years Entitlements and % of income from private fees so this funding should not be included within that calculation.