£819million to be handed to Early Years services over next 3 years

Children’s Minister Beverley Hughes has announced local authority allocations to give thousands more families access to free childcare and early years support. The whole package will total £819 million over the next three years.

She also announced the ten local areas that will offer the £10million 0-7 Partnership Pilot: Blackpool, Derby City, Hertfordshire, Isle of Wight, Kingston-upon-Thames, North Tyneside, Rotherham, Somerset, Staffordshire, and Sunderland.

The 0-7 Partnership Pilot will explore different ways of helping young children and their families, especially as they make the transition from early years to school. Schools, nursery workers, childminders and parents will have a chance to discuss how well children are developing and can make sure they are working together to reinforce what each other is doing. The pilots will test how to provide a single point of advice to parents wishing to access childcare for the first time, or with a change in working patterns.

The overall funding package consists of:

• £100m for the extension of the free nursery entitlement for over 20,000 two-year-olds in disadvantaged areas. The grant will fund 32 existing pilot authorities with another 30 Local Authorities (LAs) to be announced in September 2008. The funding will enable LAs to deliver 10 or 15 hours of free provision to the most deprived two-year-olds in their area;
• £57m for the Graduate Leader Fund, designed to help professionalise private, voluntary and independent settings by employing graduates;
• £40m for the Every Child a Talker early language programme to enable practitioners to access training and materials so they can help young children to develop their speaking and listening skills more effectively;
• £15m for ‘buddying’ arrangements between staff in early years settings and schools to promote joint working and information sharing and help ensure a smooth transition for children when they start school;
• £10m for 0-7 Partnership pilots in 10 Local Authorities;
• £7m to help nursery staff access training and materials to help them support children’s social development, backed up with a new Government programme called Social and Emotional Aspects of Development (SEAD);
• £590m over three years to extend the free entitlement to early years provision for three and four-year-olds from 12.5 hours to 15 hours.

SureStart