Funded 2 year old places

[FSFRebecca]

The Children’s Services Omnibus, Wave 4 Research Report, December 2018 has been published and has identified that some Local Authorities are struggling to implement the available funding for disadvantaged 2 year olds effectively. The report says "While the LAs that responded to the survey appeared to be taking multiple actions to promote funded early education entitlements for disadvantaged 2 year-olds, 44% of the responding LAs reported that they had experienced difficulties over the last year in implementing them.The most commonly reported difficulty local authorities faced was eligible parents not wanting or needing child care for their 2 year-old, with 34% of authorities saying that they had experienced this. Twenty per cent of local authorities said they experienced a lack of funding for publicity, outreach or infrastructure development. Two local authorities also mentioned experiencing difficulties with the impact and harmonisation with the 30 hours of free child-care offer." 

What is your experience of recruiting children who are eligible for 2 year funding?

[LKeyteach]

This academic year I have only just started to receive applications from potential or confirmed 2 year funded children.  I am not sure where they have been. I now have one child registered and attending.  I have always taken them and provided places when they became funded 3's.

I have not looked to see if the criteria has changed as this may be why so few are applying.  Or it could be that other nurseries in the area are offering something more appealing?

[finleysmaid]

We are in an interesting position for this. We are on the border of 3 counties ...1 is an area of deprivation and funds ALL 2 year olds, 2 funds 2 year olds who are in a low income family have a parent who is a carer or the child has send, the third appears to not currently send us any 2 year old funded little ones so i'm not sure what their current threshold is.

There are some issues with benefits that need to be sorted for this that I am aware of. Parents can only claim 15 hours this makes it tricky to get a job and parents are not always wanting to go back to work when their children are only 2, they don't really see the point!

The funding of course is another issue we get 5.20 per hour which may seem high but not when you take in to account you need a 1:4 ratio that's a loss of nearly 16.50 in comparison to 3 year olds and we're not getting enough for them!