CEY1317

Written evidence submitted by Tick Tocks Nursery and Afterschool Club

As an owner and manager of an early years setting it is clear that the sector has hit crisis point.

Staff are leaving the sector to pursue better paid jobs elsewhere, very often gaining employment outside of an educational institution.

Recruiting is impossible, leading to limited day care places available and an increase in waiting lists.

As a manager I am now covering shifts and counted within ratio, this creates an impossible situation.

Children have an increase in needs who require extra staff support.

We are now in a position where we would be unable to support any more children with additional needs if they needed 1 to 1 support. This is especially the case since the pandemic.

We are NOT paid enough from the government for funded children or for children requiring individual support. This leads to us increasing fees of children who are not eligible for funding and we charge for food for the children that are funded.

This current funding model is not sustainable for settings to continue.

When the national living wage increases in April 2023 I believe this will have a dramatic and devastating effect on the service we provide and may result in closure.

We currently support a number of children that have identified SEND. These children require individual support and the rate offered by the council and the EEF received barely covers a member of staff to cover this, this means that we offer a free nursery place... and I know of no other businesses that would do this!

Anything that we do with the local authority takes up too much time and there are no quick fixes to this. Any external service we refer to has waiting lists that are detrimental to children’s development and welfare. Including speech and language, ASDAT pathway etc.

January 2023