CEY1526
Written evidence submitted by Bexhill Family Collective CIC
The Bexhill Family Collective CIC was formed in August 2020 as a direct response to East Sussex County Council’s closure of 15 Children’s centres and 2 Children centre Nurseries. During the consultation period until the closure of the Children’s centre and nurseries we conducted, alongside local councillors and parents, our own consultation and provided East Sussex County Council an evidence pack entitled “what our nurseries mean to us”. (Annex a).
At our inception we tasked ourselves with ensuring that high quality, affordable childcare remained available for families in Bexhill when the Children’s centre nurseries were closed.
With the ongoing effects of the pandemic, and now the cost-of-living crisis, our work continues to be vital. In the last 12 months we have started a community pantry, community forest school and work with local partners to provide Holiday and Food sessions. We are considering expanding our nursery offer to central Bexhill but unfortunately, the cost-of-living crisis makes this a risky challenge.
The Bexhill Family Collective CIC have written this call for evidence with contribution from our District councillors who have tirelessly campaigned for affordable childcare in Bexhill on Sea.
We are responding to this Call for evidence as we firmly believe that the support for childcare and the early years needs significant investment. We need a Government who is prepared to make significant change for families, considering the needs of working families today in the most deprived areas of England and “the working poor”.
In August 2021, we reviewed our nursery competitor’s hourly rate, the average of which is £6.50 an hour. However, the true cost to parents for childcare is likely to be significantly higher due to nurseries ability to charge for “consumables” and the standard practice of administration costs being added to invoices. This hourly rate can often be higher for children aged 0-2years. If you are earning minimum wage, currently £9.50 an hour, it is not difficult to see why many parents choose not to return to work, at least until their child is entitled to the 30 hours offer.
Even with our nurseries lower-than-average hourly rate, parents will view the nursery and then choose not to start childcare due to the costs being too high.
We undertook a survey in January 2023. 100% of respondents felt that the current provision is not affordable. Here are some of the comments:
“It isn't - my husband and I both have to work condensed hours (full time in full hours and rely on family to care for our 2.5-year-old) as we can't afford to put him in nursery for more than 2 days a week. It isn't easy to understand - I found out about tax free childcare from a friend rather than the nursery itself. 'Free' 30 hours isn't exactly the free. It's depressing that some nurseries really do offer free hours, some are charging a reasonable 'top up' (my friend pays an £54 per month for 2 days a week) yet my nursery was charging us £310pm for 2.5 days a week!”
“In a family with two working parents, we still can't afford childcare. We are not eligible for any benefits or support therefore won't get any funded hours until our little one turns three. In the meantime, we have to rely on my husband's parents for childcare, both are almost 70 with health issues”.
“Childcare has become one of the biggest cost burdens to the majority of working families. For many working/single mothers the costs are becoming prohibitive. Government subsidies are woefully inadequate and the closure of subsidised nurseries in many deprived areas (Bexhill and Hastings in East Sussex are prime examples) has hit working families hard and reduced the range of early years help for many vulnerable children”.
“Help from a younger age is needed, how can a trained professional be expected to take 3 years off work and be able to get back into work easily if no help from when the child is at a younger age available! No funding for them when the mother wants to get back into work.”
The current entitlements are not designed to support working parents. Parents who attend our early years setting often are in awe that they will not receive any funded hours until their child is three years old, and even then, it isn’t “free” as advertising has led them to believe. If the Government wishes to help parents return to work then a new system needs to be designed from the age of 0-16years, encompassing babies, toddlers, preschool and school age children. For most parents, school holidays are a logistical nightmare. The Holiday and Food scheme, whilst popular and appreciated, does not support working parents as their dates are released only weeks before the school holiday and only cover a very small proportion of the working day. They are also only free for those children on Free school meals. Whilst the Bexhill Family Collective fully supports, and indeed helps run, the HAF scheme, yet again working parents are left unsupported. Here are some comments from families:
This is nursery dependent. I've found that nurseries will fudge the figures to make it incredibly confusing for parents and will charge them what they like which is above and beyond what they should be allowed to charge given the so called gov.funding in place. I was able to return to work full time but as per Q1. I have had to condense my hours and rely on family so both my sons only needed 2 days a week. Even with 30 free hours for my eldest (which works out as 22 hours pw if you're not term time only...) was still costing us £850pm in total (£310 for the 4 year old - who was eligible for 22 hours for almost 2 years!)
“No funding for 2-year-olds if you work so what help is that to working families. I could not go back to work full time as I would be better off sponging off the government, so I work part time and have help from family members for the extra childcare i need to be able to work the 26 hours i do”.
“Baby places are expensive and cost families far too much. This is because funded places are not paid at a rate that covers costs. If you want to return to work before your child is 3 and have no one to help with childcare it’s almost impossible to afford”.
“It isn't and holidays are a nightmare”.
Our community nursery operates in an area of deprivation in Bexhill on Sea. Families that attend our setting often need help trying to navigate the funding streams and to understand what they are entitled to. Daily, parents visit or call the nursery expecting to be able to claim their “30 hours free childcare” or “15 hours 2-year funding”. This Government needs to recognise that those most in need are more likely to have a lower cognitive ability that the civil servants who, with the best will in the world, design the accessibility to Early years funding.
We hear from families, key workers and social workers who explain that a barrier to children accessing early years education is their parents’ ability to understand what they can claim, for how many weeks of the year and what they may have to pay in addition. It is unacceptable that those children who would benefit from Early Years Education (EPEE Report) the most are being excluded because of their parents ability to navigate the system.
“The tax free childcare scheme is a good idea however it isn't enough to make childcare affordable for the working poor”
“We should be working towards highly subsidised or free childcare across the board. This would maximise the available workforce and ensure that all children have access to high quality, consistent and affordable early years support”.
It is an extremely challenging time to run and early years setting. Fundamentally, we want to provide high quality early years education at a rate that is affordable for parents. The early years sector has been poorly funded, squashed, squeezed and drained for over a decade and we are now living to see the result of this underfunding. It is unsurprising that childminders and nurseries have closed in the numbers they have over the last few years.
Of course, this situation has been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Our Early Years Educators, some of the most qualified, living wage staff in England worked through the pandemic with next to no consideration or recognition. They cared for the children of doctors, nurses and those children who were safer in our care than at home. They did this, not knowing whether their job would put their families in danger. The Bexhill Family Collective have spoken to many early years educators that felt taken for granted during this time who have left the profession, often earning more working in retail or care homes than in the Education sector.
We also have cohorts of students completing college with hardly any experience of working with children due to the reduced opportunities in the pandemic. This is in addition to the fact that Early Years training programmes leave students without vital knowledge about our early years curriculum and how to manage the increasing number of children with Speech and language delay, behavioural difficulties and SEND. It is no wonder, when in an early years setting with high expectations, that many new early years educators struggle.
It goes, hopefully, without saying that the increase in all costs, in every aspect of running an early years setting has increased over the last year. From fuel, resources, food and staffing costs. As a Community Interest Company, we work hard to fundraise to not pass these costs onto parents, but with less people having a disposable income to donate, it is becoming inevitable that we will have to consider a fee increase towards the end of 2023.
The pandemic has exacerbated the already critically weak provision for children with SEND in Early Years. There are several different issues which make the caring of children with SEND extremely challenging for early years settings.
The Bexhill Family Collective CIC was formed in August 2020 as a direct response to the East Sussex County Council’s decision to close 15 children’s centres and the remaining Children’s Centre nurseries. The Children’s centres were closed in April 2020 and the nurseries in December 2020. This was in despite of the fact we were in the midst of a global pandemic and ESCC had no way of forecasting the future need of these centres.
As it happens, they have been greatly needed and missed. There were no local centres to pick up on family’s needs resulting from the pandemic e.g. lack of socialisation, health advice, child screening etc. It does not take a mountain of research to find evidence that the result of children’s centres closing has caused harm to children. For example, in 2021 the Nuffield Foundation funded research by the Institute of Fiscal Studies which found that 13,000 hospital admissions in children were prevented, each year by Children’s centres before their funding was cut.
I started working for Children’s Centres in 2004. At the time, Children’s Centres were the buzzing centre of local communities. The sound of singing, children laughing, parents chatting, and the overall feeling of safety and love radiated from these centres (based on my experience of working in Kent and East Sussex). Fast forward to 2023 and Children’s Centres are barely open, when they are it is for bookable activities which are run by volunteers. These sessions are little more than glorified playgroups, not because the Children’s Centre staff have lost sight of what is important, but because “it is this or nothing at all”. The groups formally run in children’s centres were led by qualified, early years educated staff with specific parental support training.
You cannot walk into a centre and ask for advice. Noone will show you how to breast feed, start weaning, keep your home safe with a toddler or get advice for post-natal depression.
The Bexhill Family Collective and many other not for profit and charity organisations have tried to fill the void, but none of this replaces the “one stop shop” that were Children’s Centres.
We welcome the opening of Family hubs in 2023, especially the extension to a 0-19 service, the expectation of Family hubs working with Voluntary and community groups and having a parent and carer panel as minimum expectations.
We are concerned about the longevity of the Family hubs initiative with this Government’s history of cutting services which are evidenced to support families and children (The impact of children’s centres: studying the effects of children's centres in promoting better outcomes for young children and their families). The danger of a short-term initiative is likely to see the voluntary sector reducing their parenting support when this is provided by Family hubs and then this will need to built, again, when the Government has a change of heart. We urge the Government to recognise the error of their ways in the reduction of early years support in the past and commit to providing a 0-19 parenting and family support offer in law.
We are surprised that this question is part of the call for evidence. There has been an abundance of National and international evidence that Early Years Education has a positive effect on future outcomes for children. Our Nursery, like many around the country, put measures in place to ensure that all the children that leave our setting having experienced a whole range of activities which extend their cultural capital and that, as much as is possible, children from deprived backgrounds start their compulsory education on a level playing field to their more fortunate peers. This is no small fete, our staff are constantly evolving and finding new ways to involve hard to reach parents in their child’s education. Without settings such as ours, primary schools would have a much more difficult time transitioning children into compulsory education.
A measure of how well Early Years settings are carrying out their tasks could be data collected by primary schools following the Covid 19 pandemic when many of those children will not have attending an early years setting due to lockdowns. Local schools report that children are entering reception year less able to take care of themselves independently, with significant speech and language delay, behavioural difficulties and anxiety. The parents of these children are also much more anxious, many not having separated from their children before. Early years setting carry out an irreplaceable role in preparing children for the fomrmal stages of their education.
The Government is presumably running this call for evidence as they recognise the sector is in crisis and that the current entitlements and schemes do not support families, particularly those in the most deprived areas of England. The sector does not need any more plasters. It does not need anymore training.
The sector needs not just sufficient funding, it needs investment.
Families need funded hours from birth, not from three years old. They also need funding hours past their child’s early years education. Giving families the potential to earn money and spend more in England.
We genuinely hope that you consider the recommendations of this Call for evidence and should you require further information please contact us.
March 2023