FSFRebecca Posted October 5, 2017 Share Posted October 5, 2017 Nursery World magazine is reporting that some parents are receiving mixed messages regarding their ongoing eligibility for the 30 hours funding. The requirement is that parents reconfirm their eligibility every 3 months and they should get a message from the government to remind them. According to the NW article some parents have been told they are eligible for a year and don't need to reconfirm and some haven't reconfirmed because they haven't had a reminder and so risk losing their funding. You can read the article here: Parents confused over reconfirmation of 30-hour place 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hopeytg Posted October 5, 2017 Share Posted October 5, 2017 Non of my parents had received a reminder - some received an email saying their funding had stopped as they had not renewed!! You can imagine the panic - I have sent all of them my own reminder and our portal shows those parents who have reconfirmed so I am keeping an eye on it - but it is more work for me again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Littlesparklesnursery Posted October 9, 2017 Share Posted October 9, 2017 some have recieved reminders but found no facility to renew on thier gateway account. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tracy_Rogers Posted October 11, 2017 Share Posted October 11, 2017 Our parents are saying the same, no reminders from HMRC. We have been doing our own reminders. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FSFRebecca Posted November 14, 2017 Author Share Posted November 14, 2017 Don't forget to remind parents to reconfirm their eligibility for 30 hours funding! If parents want to continue to receive funding in January they must reconfirm their eligibility this month. They need to log into their government childcare account 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thumperrabbit Posted March 13, 2019 Share Posted March 13, 2019 On 14/11/2017 at 13:41, Rebecca said: Don't forget to remind parents to reconfirm their eligibility for 30 hours funding! If parents want to continue to receive funding in January they must reconfirm their eligibility this month. They need to log into their government childcare account We aren't yet offering 30 hours but potentially in September we will. Interested in how you manage this in a big nursery setting? We are slightly concerned that parents won't reconfirm their eligibility - does this happen? can you do anything about it? have you written something in your Terms & Conditions to cover yourself? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FSFRebecca Posted March 13, 2019 Author Share Posted March 13, 2019 37 minutes ago, thumperrabbit said: We aren't yet offering 30 hours but potentially in September we will. Interested in how you manage this in a big nursery setting? We are slightly concerned that parents won't reconfirm their eligibility - does this happen? can you do anything about it? have you written something in your Terms & Conditions to cover yourself? We keep a list of who is receiving funding and we just keep on hassling - it's a pain, but in a year we've only had one who missed the deadline. They dropped some of the additional sessions that the funding was covering and paid for some of the others and then picked them all back up in the next funding period. It's been an admin challenge - overall we found we have less children in the term time but attending more often and then more in the holidays than previously because of the 'stretched' funding. We've reduced our capacity in our 3+ age group and increased capacity for 0-3, overall it's been OK money wise - but some of my staff have had to work with 0-3 when they prefer 3+ but it was that or 'nothing'. Consequently I've had to invest in some 0-3 specific training (which isn't a bad thing, but is a cost) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stargrower Posted March 13, 2019 Share Posted March 13, 2019 We haven't found the reconfirming a problem, but we have had two families that didn't apply in the first place, when their child became eligible. Despite being given endless information, they said they didn't realise they had to apply for a code and had missed the deadline. One was fine about it and the other was VERY cross and later left us! So we now keep a list of every child possibly becoming eligible and remind each parent personally to apply. The other big change for us is our holiday numbers have grown dramatically because of the stretched offer. We used to run a holiday club together with our pre-school children but are now limiting this to children who have previously attended the nursery as we simply don't have space. We also have to get in extra staff in the holidays as we have staff on term-time only contracts who don't want to change to year round. All in all, we're surviving (but money is very tight) with our under threes provision subsidising the underfunded over threes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FSFRebecca Posted March 13, 2019 Author Share Posted March 13, 2019 5 hours ago, Stargrower said: We haven't found the reconfirming a problem, but we have had two families that didn't apply in the first place, when their child became eligible. Despite being given endless information, they said they didn't realise they had to apply for a code and had missed the deadline. One was fine about it and the other was VERY cross and later left us! So we now keep a list of every child possibly becoming eligible and remind each parent personally to apply. The other big change for us is our holiday numbers have grown dramatically because of the stretched offer. We used to run a holiday club together with our pre-school children but are now limiting this to children who have previously attended the nursery as we simply don't have space. We also have to get in extra staff in the holidays as we have staff on term-time only contracts who don't want to change to year round. All in all, we're surviving (but money is very tight) with our under threes provision subsidising the underfunded over threes. Sounds similar to us! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thumperrabbit Posted March 13, 2019 Share Posted March 13, 2019 Thank you both for your replies. As we are a maintained school so we won't be offering stretched hours. However we are very concerned about parents applying/reconfirming codes, there are some parents no matter how much you chase up just don't do what they need to do, even grabbing some of them to sign their funding form (15 hours) each term is a nightmare! I think we will need to put something in our Terms & Conditions about reducing their hours if they don't reconfirm their codes, presuming you are allowed to do that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hopeytg Posted March 13, 2019 Share Posted March 13, 2019 Not sure how your LA Portal works but ours clearly shows the dates of eligibility giving us plenty of time to remind parents - so far we have not had a problem although on parent has just lost her 30 hrs due to a clerical error on the Working Tax Credits side - term before she goes to school so she would really benefit from continuing the 30 hrs but understandably Mum can't afford to pay the extra - system has flaws 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stargrower Posted March 14, 2019 Share Posted March 14, 2019 Do you not have a grace period? We have three months when parents are still able to claim if they stop being eligible and I thought this was across the board. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarshaD Posted April 7, 2019 Share Posted April 7, 2019 The problem with the grace period is that unless they have tried to apply before it starts they cannot reconfirm during it. Like Stargrower I had a parent who really faffed joining us and missed the deadline. She was cross and blamed me saying I was the expert and should have notified her. I did try to explain that it was a learning curve for us all at that point but she left owing me half a terms fees! I have also had issues with parents who get jobs and want 30 hours straight away. The media doesn’t make it explicit that they have to wait to the next claim period. Another problem is if you’re the setting with the extended funding you lose out. I have a parent starting school nursery after Easter and despite being reminded she applied last minute and we are waiting to hear. If she doesn’t get it we lose our 15 hours. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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