CEY0010

Written evidence submitted by Station House Community Association Limited

• How affordable….?

TBH it’s a nightmare, even those who work in the industry get confused. Its set up for one child families, by and large totally ignores wrap around care. Most of our families have mixed aged children so have different requirements.
2-year-old and 3 or 4-year-old entitlement dose not explain that this is subject to local availability and providers can set their own timetables. 30 hours is not really 30 hours as it can be spread over the whole year.
Tax free childcare is still not well understood
When families are eligible to support from UC the evidence that they need is not standard format. We have about 10 families currently and each one needs their evidence of spend in a different format.
Payment in arrears is a barrier: We don’t normally charge upfront (most do) but that is a huge financial risk for us.
Payment to each family can lead to families getting the money and not paying their invoice (Student finance has a far superior system).
Affordability: what a joke. Due to the lack of consistent financial support in a child’s life, form 6 week to 3 years only tax free subsidy, then some support but additional cost varies a lot, then when they go to full time school back to tax free. Within the strategy there is a confusion if its education and or care. What you need to promote is that all care is education, play based learning. Then we are not babysitters we are professionals.

• Are the current entitlements providing parents/carers with sufficient childcare, and to what extent are childcare costs affecting parents/carers from returning to work full-time?
  Where families can find sufficient care it’s not affordable for most of our families.
• Whether the current Tax-Free Childcare scheme, and support for childcare from the benefits and tax credit system, is working effectively or whether these subsidies could be better used within other childcare subsidies.
• It’s so hard to navigate and understand its off putting. It can be complicated to navigate and is still not well understood by either families and providers.

Early years provision

• What challenges do early years’ providers face in terms of workforce, including recruiting, and retaining qualified staff, and the barriers faced by individuals joining the profession? To what extent has the Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated workforce challenges?

Being able to pay an appropriate rate is a huge barrier. The funding that we get doesn’t even cover staffing costs let along core costs. when NLW goes up funding rates don’t go up and as wages is our biggest expense this means that employer have to fund the government requirement. They have announced a 10% NLW rise, so we will have a 10% wage rise. This has to be across all our employees if we didn’t the differentiation between junior and senior staff would not be enough.

• Whether the Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) system is meeting the needs of pupils with Special Educational Needs or Disabilities (SEND), and the improvements that could be made to better support young children with SEND within early years provisions.

There is not enough money to pay for the appropriate level of support. Where specialist training is needed it’s not always available at the right time and not fully funded including cover costs. Professional play “hot potato” for care plans, eha etc as no one appears to be resourced to manage them. Whilst children are awaiting a diagnosis/plan there is no funding in place to cover the costs of the additional staff. By the time we get things in place, the child is often ready to move to the next setting.
smaller setting are particularly disadvantaged as they just don’t have capacity to have enough staff with speciality knowledge.

• To what extent does the early years system adequately prepare young children for their transition into primary education, particularly children from disadvantaged backgrounds. No comment
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• The extent to which the reduction of Sure Start Children’s Centres has affected children and families, particularly children from disadvantaged backgrounds, and the role of Family Hubs.

Our only offer funded places, so this means that PVI providers are left to be the delivery people. Basically they operate on the bits of childcare that might break even, leaving the rest of us to take on the higher financial risk of whatever is left.

Basically the who system is a mess:

All other developed countries get a general subsidy for all childcare direct to providers and the remaining element is means tested.

The confusion between childcare/early education/healthy holidays just frustrated families and makes planning by providers almost impossible.

What families need is a consistent affordable pathway for children of all ages

This would mean that sometimes things run at a loss: this is what infrastructure looks like. 

December 2022