CEY1570

Written evidence submitted by the YMCA England & Wales

About YMCA

YMCA is the oldest and largest youth charity in the world, set up in England in 1844. In the 178 years since, YMCA has evolved into a global movement through World Wars, pandemics and financial crises to help more than 64 million people across 120 different countries today.

Throughout England and Wales we operate as a federation, with 83 local YMCAs supporting young people in 190 local authority areas across both countries. We operate in 688 communities across England and Wales, creating supportive environments where young people can belong, contribute and thrive.

The 375,197 young people we help each year are firmly at the heart of what we do, supported by more than 3,900 members of staff and 1,900 volunteers across 669 locations.

 

Early Years Education

YMCA is the largest charity provider of Early Years Education across England.  We work with 7,528 children each year across 83 childcare settings. We help them to take their first step, speak their first word, and ultimately have a transformative effect on their path into adulthood. We particularly work in low income communities where families face multiple vulnerabilities and often need the greatest support.

Making a difference to children’s lives is at the heart of every YMCA. We know it takes a whole community to raise a child, and we invest in our families to help them with every step of parenthood and work with the wider community to support parent toddler groups as well as offer specialist programmes for children with additional needs.

YMCA Early Years Education is:

 

Childcare Entitlements

How affordable and easy to understand is the current provision of childcare in England and what steps, if any, could be taken to improve it, especially in relation to families living within the most deprived areas in England?

Understanding of the system

The current system for the provision of childcare/early years education in England is not easy for parents to understand. The fact that the Government describes the scheme as ‘15 hours of free childcare’ means that some parents struggle to understand how the funding works, that there may still be some costs to them, and the fact that it actually costs providers such as YMCA money to deliver this work, as government funding does not fully cover the cost of delivery.

Families with 2 year olds who receive 15 hours’ funded childcare are usually those from deprived backgrounds, which means that the early years provider receives a slightly elevated funding rate, but isn’t able to charge for consumables (i.e. lunch or snacks for the child). The funding rate for 3 and 4 year olds is lower, but providers can charge for consumables, and so local YMCAs must do so in order to afford to run their services. Some parents are not aware that they might have to pay for consumables for their 3 and 4 year olds, as they are under the impression that this childcare is entirely ‘free’.

There is also a lack of understanding among parents about the 30 hours of funded childcare entitlement. Many parents are not aware that they have to apply for this themselves, and that they must reapply for this every term. There are cut-off dates beyond which it is not possible to apply for this funding, but some YMCA staff feel that the Government and local authorities do not communicate sufficiently with parents to remind them to reapply. Parents predominantly expect the early years provider to remind them to reapply for this funding, which is a considerable burden on the provider.

YMCA believes there should be clearer communication to parents around what is available to them in terms of funded childcare, how the system works, and what their responsibilities are.

 

Problems with affordability of provision

80% of YMCA childcare settings cannot deliver childcare at the funding rate provided by the local authority. This means they either operate at a loss, or the fees from private fee-paying families subsidise the cost of delivery. In deprived communities, where the majority of families only access funded childcare places, all too often there is no choice but to operate at a loss. One of our local YMCAs has to find £500,000 per year from charitable funding to subsidise the financial loss from its childcare settings.

The average rate paid by a local authority in which YMCAs operate is £4.45 an hour per child. This is in comparison to the actual cost of delivery, which stands at an average of £5.52 per hour per child. This means that for every hour of early years education YMCA offers per child on the government scheme, we lose on average £1.07. This is echoed nationally, with there being a 20% shortfall in funding across the country compared to cost of provision. Some YMCA staff suggested that this has now drifted closer to a 30% shortfall.

Shortfalls in local authority funding are particularly significant for YMCA because 64% of YMCA early years income comes from government funded places. In some areas where YMCA operates, all of the places we provide are government funded, without any subsidy from private non-funded places charged at a higher rate.

Commercial providers often place a cap on the number of funded places they take as these are less profitable, and also choose to operate in more affluent communities. This means that disadvantaged parents have less choice and availability of settings open to them locally. However, 80% of local YMCAs which provide early years education do not put any caps on the number of government funded places in order to support those families who need it most, so that disadvantaged families do not go without. Almost half (45%) of all YMCA childcare settings are in the 30% most deprived areas.

Families who need more hours of childcare are able to purchase additional sessions. This allows early years providers to utilise these funds to offset the extra financial burden of providing for children with additional needs. However, this only works in settings where there are families able to pay for additional sessions. In highly deprived communities 7% of families purchase sessions, compared to 84% of families in low deprivation settings. In less affluent communities it is much more difficult to cross subsidise in order to provide the additional support required, especially when the level of need is higher. Even local YMCAs operating in more affluent areas are seeing an increasing number of children attending part time rather than full time, as parents cut down on hours to try to save money.

In addition to these funding challenges, many local authorities in the areas where we work have faced financial losses due to increased utility bills, wage bills, and other consequences of the current rate of inflation. As a result, many local YMCAs are being asked for increases in the rent they pay to the local authority. This is at the same time as having to pay higher utility bills themselves, rising food costs for any lunches or other food provided, and higher wages for staff due to increases in the National Living Wage, despite government funding not keeping pace with these increases.

 

Families in the most deprived areas

From a sample of YMCA settings, 34% of children living in highly deprived communities required some form of additional support to reach their Early Learning Goals. In contrast, only 18% needed additional support in medium areas of deprivation and 13% in low deprivation.

There is a strong link in YMCA settings between those families in high deprivation areas, their children having additional needs and then going on to not achieve their Early Learning goals. In high deprivation settings 60% of children did not reach their early learning attainment goals, compared to 11% in low deprivation areas. This means that children from high deprivation areas are more likely to start primary school with a lower prior attainment level.

In its focus on areas of deprivation, the Government currently offers an additional £302 of funding for early years providers per year per child if a parent receives income support benefits. However, this is not sufficient to provide the significant level of increased support that is needed. Additionally, there is funding available for those diagnosed with Special Educational Needs or Disabilities (SEND), but it is rare for children under five years old to be able to receive a diagnosis and therefore to access this funding. The application process for this funding is also complex and demanding, as will be detailed in response to the question on meeting the needs of pupils with SEND.

Local YMCAs work holistically with families to ensure that they are receiving the financial and practical support they are entitled to, and to try to provide children with additional needs with the education and care required for them to achieve their Early Learning Goals. However, we do not receive sufficient funding from the Government to cover the cost of this work.

 

In addition to attainment level, the impact of a provider having to support families on child protection plans is currently not built into the early years funding model. In our high deprivation settings, 29% of children have a child protection plan in place, in comparison to 2% in low deprivation settings.

When a child has a child protection plan in place, practitioners have to spend additional time supporting families, writing reports and attending key meetings with local social services. This takes on average eight to ten hours of a practitioner’s time per child over an eight-week period, equating to between £104 and £142 per child. This means staff time taken away from educating children, or charitable resources having to be used to support this. With a higher proportion of children in deprived settings being on child protection plans, this disproportionately limits those providers’ level of funding.

There is a need to properly resource this aspect of work so that early years practitioners have the time to engage. This will support the pressured social care system and help prevent harm to children by effectively utilising those workers who spend the most time with the child and their family.

In deprived areas, where there is a higher than average proportion of children additional needs and child protection plans, primary schools then have to take additional action to support children’s learning. Children who do not achieve the expected standard in the Early Years Foundation Stage attract Lower Prior Attainment Funding from the state when they move into primary school, to support their development.

Currently, the Department for Education spends £2.6 billion on correcting this failure and supporting children’s lower prior attainment at primary and secondary school. This equates to 6.7% of the overall national education funding formula.  There are additional financial and social costs beyond this later in life, as there is a clear association between early childhood experiences and life outcomes, such as financial wellbeing, addiction, and crime.  England alone is paying over £16 billion a year due to this, including children in care, and long term mental and physical health issues. This is almost five times more than the annual spend in England on early education and childcare entitlements, and around 44 times the annual expenditure on specialist perinatal mental health support.

A pupil in receipt of lower prior attainment funding will get an additional £1,133 a year via the formula, throughout their time in primary school (seven years).  If additional resources were put into early years education to provide targeted support, YMCA believes that fewer children would enter the school system having been unable to meet their Early Learning Goals, thus reducing the need for lower prior attainment funding.

 

Steps to improve the system

We need to see the Government invest in children by building a sustainable Early Years Education sector that is resourced to meet the scale of need. This includes increasing investment in early years education funding, so that the real costs of delivery are covered, and staff are paid a fair and liveable wage. Some of this investment should be targeted through a larger deprivation supplement, to cover the higher proportion of SEND needs and child protection requirements.

The lower prior attainment funding given to primary schools is being used to correct a failure in early years. Instead, using this funding to give targeted additional support to children in early years education would allow us to get it right first time and would be much more cost effective. Spending the annual lower prior attainment funding across the three years a child spends in early years education at the rate a primary school receives (£1,133 per child, per year), would save the state four years’ worth of additional funding if children then enter the school system having met their Early Learning Goals.

An additional £1,133 over a year of early years funding works out as a top up of £1.98 per child per hour for those who receive the means tested funding rate for their 2 year old, assuming attendance of 15 hours per week. This would be enough to allow early years providers to offer reduced ratios for part of a day for smaller sessions on areas such as speech and language, or to bring in specialist and more highly trained staff to support children with additional needs.

Increasing funding to those who receive funded childcare for their 2 year old, and increasing take up from those who are eligible whilst in early years education, would be an effective way to break the link between deprivation and lower prior attainment through the additional support which could be offered.

In terms of other necessary changes to the system, local YMCA staff raised the need for better professional recognition of early years education. Early years education workers should be understood as professionals delivering fundamentally important education and care, not simply ‘babysitting’. Early years education is a regulated, governed service similar to primary and secondary education, and deserves funding and professional recognition which reflect the importance of this work for children’s lives. This also requires politicians and wider society to move away from any suggestion that this is a sector primarily for women to work in, and encouraging more men into the sector (which could help to relieve some of the current pressure around recruitment).

 

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?

The current system of funding early years education entitlements, where government funding does not cover the full cost of delivery, means that smaller early years education providers are driven out of the market. This includes both voluntary and commercial providers; a local YMCA has found that any early years setting with fewer than 60 children enrolled is now financially unviable.

This leaves parents/carers with fewer options for early years providers, and many of the options that remain will be commercial providers with higher fees. This leads to parents/carers purchasing fewer hours of childcare than they would like, due to being unable to afford the cost. Post-Covid, some local YMCAs have found that more parents have changed to both working part time so that they can share more of the childcare between themselves, in order to lower their childcare costs. More parents having to work part time inevitably affects the economy negatively, as well as limiting families’ incomes.

Before the pandemic and the current cost of living crisis, some local YMCAs were considering expanding their provision by opening more nurseries. Given the unsustainably financial situation they are now facing, many will be pausing or shelving these expansion programmes because of concerns about costs and financial viability.

 

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.

Local YMCA staff feel that the Tax-Free Childcare scheme is not well publicised or well understood by parents. There are also challenges with how it functions, as some local YMCAs have experienced that the Government pay the funding late, leading to YMCA staff having to chasing parents about debt.

Some local YMCA staff feel that the Childcare Voucher Scheme (which was the predecessor to the Tax-Free Childcare scheme) worked better, as parents applied for the vouchers, sent them to the provider and then the provider could draw down the funding directly. The new Tax-Free Childcare scheme requires parents to put funding into an account, wait for the Government to match this, and then send the money to the provider, with frequent delays.

 

 

 

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?

Local YMCAs across England and Wales face significant recruitment and retention challenges for early years staff.

Staffing is one of the biggest expenses a childcare provider has, forming around 70% of income. However, funding for early years provision has not been rising at the same pace as the increasing National Living Wage. Since 2016 the National Living Wage has increased by 24% and in that same time the average funding rate that local authorities give to providers has only increased by 13%. This leads to a continual increase in the funding shortfall (described in the first section of this consultation response) for organisations that provide a large number of funded places, forcing an additional burden of covering higher wages onto providers.

There has been a recruitment crisis in this sector for at least the last two years. People are leaving the workforce due to the persistently low pay; there is a lack of level 3 qualified staff; and there are fewer students at college training in early years education: one local YMCA has noticed a two thirds decrease in the number of students.

In order to try and retain staff while unable to increase their wages, many local YMCAs are providing breakfast and lunch for staff, and offering to wash their uniforms to save them the cost of this. Local YMCA staff raised the point that many YMCA settings are operating in areas of high deprivation, and their staff also come from these areas: they are supporting children and families in poverty, but they are also living in poverty themselves. As a result, many YMCA early years providers are losing their workforce to supermarket employers, because the pay is higher there. The salaries paid to early years workers do not reflect the powerful impact that they have on children’s long-term outcomes, but their pay cannot be increased because the government essentially sets their salaries.

Some local YMCA staff raised that the current Early Years Educator qualification is very theory-based, and many of their newly qualified workers are struggling with the practical elements of the role. Although theory and underpinning knowledge are highly important, the lack of practical knowledge often means that staff still need additional on the job training. This has an impact on capacity for current team members.

 

The effects of the Covid-19 pandemic

YMCA stayed open throughout the pandemic to support key worker families and those most vulnerable. We have also welcomed new families to our settings where private providers have closed their doors. The Government has continued to pay providers the amount they would have received for government funded places pre-pandemic, and this has been welcomed.

However, income was lost from the reduced number of private places, which are essential to subsidise the government funded places. The existing fragility of the sector meant that a number of providers have permanently closed, which will have a large impact on those services still open and willing to take government funded places.

Pre-Covid, many local authorities ran campaigns in the community to raise awareness of the entitlement to funded childcare. Healthcare visitors were also visiting families in person and able to discuss this with them. Local YMCA staff feel that these factors have been missing over the last two years of the pandemic, meaning fewer children are coming to nursery because parents aren’t aware of the entitlement. This is a significant problem for many YMCA settings, as nurseries are not financially viable if they are only 50% full.

The children who have returned to early years settings often have increased needs as a result of lost education during the pandemic. Many have increased behavioural issues, their developmental requirements are higher, and there is a lack of speech and language development. Providers are also seeing more safeguarding issues relating to domestic abuse and substance use at home, and the effects of this on children.

Covid has also exacerbated other challenges. Many people have left the workforce, and there have been fewer people graduating from early years education qualifications due to the disruption to education and training. In some areas there are people who could be recruited as staff, but they do not have the necessary level 3 qualification.

The government provided some education recovery funding to help education providers and children to bounce back from the effects of the pandemic. Some of the activities funded through this included free child development training, practitioner training, and upskilling for workers. These are valuable opportunities, but they do not solve the fundamental problem in early years education, which is the huge workforce shortfall: it is not helpful to have additional funding for training when providers cannot recruit workers to train.

 

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 provision.

YMCA experiences significant challenges in providing sufficient support for pupils with Special Educational Needs or Disabilities (SEND), due to systemic barriers and insufficient funding.

As previously described, the core government funding of early years education does not cover the cost of delivery, and this shortfall is exacerbated when children have additional needs including SEND. It is not possible for providers to deliver the additional support children with SEND need, including lower staffing ratios or support from specialists, with the funding provided. Even the highest possible funding allocation does not cover the cost of 1:1 support for children with very high needs, which some providers are trying to offer.

Some local YMCAs are trying to support children with SEND who should be in specialist settings, but are being educated in mainstream settings due to a lack of places available or a lack of funding for their education and care. Some local YMCA staff have described that in their local authority area there is a cap on the number of funded placements for children with SEND, and once all of these places have been filled, other children with SEND have to be placed in mainstream settings despite the unsuitability of this.

There is government funding available for children diagnosed with SEND, but it is rare for children under five years old to be able to receive a diagnosis, as paediatricians are reluctant to diagnose children at an age where their behaviour can change significantly. This means that early years providers cannot receive additional funding to support these children. At the same time, due to lack of capacity from other professionals, it is becoming increasingly the responsibility of nursery managers or SENCOs to write a child’s Education and Health Care Plan.

Local YMCA staff have also described the barriers to getting children observed and assessed by a local authority SEND specialist. In some areas large amounts of evidence must be submitted to the local authority before the local authority will send a specialist to the setting to observe and assess the needs of the child, and enable access to additional SEND funding. Some local authorities require early years providers to repeat three cycles of observing children for 12 weeks and attempting interventions to address their behaviour and needs, before sending a specialist to assess the child. This means three terms’ worth of observation and repeating the same interventions, a considerable amount of time for the provider and the child to not be receiving the right assessment or support. In other areas, speech and language referrals can take two years to come through. Many of these issues are due to the lack of resource within local authorities.

Another challenge for early years providers is that primary schools expect children coming to them to be ‘school-ready’, but there is no clear or shared definition of what this should mean, which inevitably leads to differences of opinion between schools and early years providers on the level of development expected of children.

YMCA believes that there must be greater investment at an earlier time for children with additional needs including SEND. The process of applying for assessment should be more straightforward, and the barriers to getting a specialist to assess a child should be much lower so that assessment can take place sooner. A focus on early intervention would ensure that all children receive the support they need for their learning and development to be on track.

 

To what extent does the early years system adequately prepare young children for their transition into primary education, particularly children from disadvantaged backgrounds?

The early years system is not funded sufficiently to enable it to adequately prepare young children for their transition into primary education, especially in regard to children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

As previously described, there is a strong link between families living in high deprivation areas, their children having additional needs, and children not achieving their Early Learning goals. At YMCA settings in high deprivation areas, 60% of children did not reach their early learning attainment goals, in comparison to 11% in low deprivation areas. This means that children from high deprivation areas are more likely to start primary school with a lower prior attainment level.

The Government offers additional Early Years Pupil Premium funding of up to £342 per year per child to early years providers, if the child is aged 3 or 4 and the parent receives income support benefits. However, this is not sufficient to provide the significant level of increased support that is needed. Additionally, there is funding available for children diagnosed with SEND, but it is unusual for children under five years old to be able to receive a diagnosis and therefore to access this funding. Very few parents in high deprivation areas are financially able to fund more hours of early years education or 1:1 support for their children with additional needs, to enable their children to be fully prepared for the transition into primary education.

 

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.

Reduction of Sure Start Children’s Centres

The reduction of Sure Start Centres has negatively affected children, families, and early years providers. Sure Start Centres provided valuable services such as parenting workshops, potty training, advice on behaviour management, and support with safeguarding cases. They were an extra resource for families and early years education providers. The reduction of these centres has meant that many YMCA early years settings are now providing these services, but with no extra funding or capacity to support this work. Many other early years providers will not undertake this work, and so children and families are missing out on vital, much-needed services.

 

The role of family hubs

YMCA runs 13 family hubs across England and Wales, with 688 annual users. Many local YMCAs are currently involved in conversations with their local authorities about supporting the delivery of further new family hubs. Local YMCAs can provide a natural home for family hubs as many of the services intended to be delivered by family hubs are already delivered by YMCA settings.

There is concern among local YMCA staff that family hubs will not be able to provide all of the services that people might expect, because the funding provided is not sufficient. Some staff have also found that the process of working with the local authority to plan a new family hub has been long and convoluted.

Nevertheless, local YMCAs welcome the opportunity to work with or deliver family hubs in their local areas, and to ensure better collaboration between early years education and wider family services.

YMCA recommends that in distributing Family Hub programme funds, the Government should consider how local authorities can involve early years providers and strengthen their capacity to provide the additional support that children need.

January 2023