Latest news on the Provider Self Update and Find Childcare
Urgent plea:
We need to ask those of you who have not yet completed the Provider Self Update to please do it as soon as possible.
The lack of data on childcare provision in Devon is having a significant impact on the way that we can serve you, as providers, and parents:
- Identifying where more wraparound places are needed so that expansion funding can be given to the areas where provision is most needed is extremely difficult when we do not know what is currently available
- Elsewhere in this digest we tell you more about capital funding. Prioritising where more early years and childcare places are required is impossible in some areas where there have been no or very few updates made through the Provider Self Update
- Over the summer we start to write the annual Childcare Sufficiency Assessment Report. Without the data from you we simply cannot give an accurate reflection of what is and is not available, at what times, on which days, during what weeks and for which ages of children
- Parents can’t find the childcare they need because there are still a lot of services who have not completed the update and therefore they are not listed on Find Childcare.
Progress update:
Our team is dedicated to getting the Provider Self Update and Find Childcare sorted out, but they cannot do it on their own. We need your help please.
We appreciate how frustratingly slow progress has been but there continue to be new issues that arise. They have asked for these to be shared with providers so you are aware of them and can be reassured that they are doing everything they can to resolve them. Here are the ones we are aware of:
- If providers choose not to consent to share their address on Find Childcare (this generally applies to childminders) then parents cannot search for them by postcode. They will, however, show if a parent searches by their name
- If providers do not consent to share their address their email address does not display, and it instead defaults to a Devon County Council mailbox. We will forward these emails to providers if we know who they are or contact the parent to establish which provider/s they were contacting and then forward the parents email on to the provider. Our team is in touch with Capita One to try and find a solution to this
- The opening hours that are displayed on Find Childcare are the funded hours for funded providers and not the actual hours they open. This may be trickier to overcome as the issue is linked to the way that we fund providers
- Some childminders were having their full addresses displayed – this has now been fixed.
A few things for you to do:
- Please check your records on Find Childcare and report anything else that is wrong – that is not related to the issues above
- If there is sibling discount next to charges but you do not offer sibling discount, please let us know by emailing: childcareinfo@devon.gov.uk with the subject ‘Sibling Discount’ (this is to do with historic data that doesn’t appear on the Provider Self Update being picked up for the website)
- If you are an out of school provider (breakfast, after school and holiday) and accept the early years funding please let us know by emailing: childcareinfo@devon.gov.uk with the subject ‘Funded Out of School Service’.