Hammersmith & Fulham Additional 15 Hours Free Childcare

January 2017 Edition

Newsletter

Hammersmith & Fulham additional 15 hours’ free childcare

Welcome to the first edition of the additional 15 hours’ free childcarenewsletter.

Firstly, I would like to introduce myself to you, my name is Judy Matthews and I am the Interim Strategic Implementation Manager for delivery of the 15 hours’ free childcare for 3 & 4 year olds.

Over the coming months I will update you on the progress we are making towards the implementation of providing an additional 15 hours of free childcare for children of working parents from September 2017.

At the moment all 3 & 4 year olds are entitled to up to 15 hours of free childcare and early education a week for up to 38 weeks a year. This provision can be accessed in school Nursery classes, private Day Nurseries and Pre-schools and also with childminders. The additional 15 hours childcare entitlement is being introduced alongside a new scheme to help working families with the cost of childcare called Tax-Free Childcare.

From September 2017, working parents of 3 and 4 year olds may be entitled to an additional 15 hours of free childcare per week. This funding will only be made available to families where both parents are working (or the sole parent is working in a lone parent family) and each parent earns, on average a weekly minimum equivalent to 16 hours at national minimum wage (NMW) or national living wage (NLW), and less than £100,000 per year.

Central Government will soon inform us on how parents will be able to check their eligibility and once we have this information it will be shared via the newsletter and on the Family Information Service Directory.

It is a tight timescale to meet and during the month of January a substantial mapping exercise has been undertaken to establish predicted numbers of families who will be eligible to claim for the additional funding and assess the potential number of places we will need to meet the demand across the Borough.

The Table below indicates the anticipated numbers of families who will be eligible to claim and the predicted number who will take up the offer across the three Borough’s.

Officers have attended Schools Forums to provide information about the offer, the funding formula and have shared an indicative rate of £6:50 for additional fifteen hours as a means of enabling providers to begin a business modelling exercise.

During February there will be two initial provider forums in each borough on the following dates:

Further daytime sessions will be planned to meet demand in each of the three boroughs.

We want to help providers and schools understand their market and work collaboratively to deliver the 30 hour offer and so will be organising some business planning workshops delivered in smaller locality areas to introduce providers to each other so they can begin to explore the possibility of sharing provision with another provider and to explore the possibility of providing a ‘stretched’ offer. This means the 15 hours could be delivered by less hours per week over a longer period of time. The Governments expectation is that there will be flexibility in opening hours to meet the needs of working parents.

The Family Information Service Directories for each borough are being updated as and when more information becomes available and there will be a monthly newsletter to keep you all up to date with our progress. If you have any questions or would like to discuss anything in more detail my contact details are:

Judy Matthews – Strategic Implementation Manager (Interim)

Email:

Tel: 07702 151845

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