30 Hours, Part 6: Portsmouth pilot

In Portsmouth, settings receive £4.88 per funded hour. But what is one of the highest rates in the pilot scheme will fall to a basic pre-supplements rate of £4.09 in September.

‘As in most areas, some providers have shown some concern at the rates, but the silent majority appear happy and think they can make this work,’ says Anthony Harper, prevention and early help locality manager.

As there were limited places available, at the beginning of the trial, eligibility was limited to parents earning up to £22,500. ‘This was raised to £28,500 in October and £35,000 in January as we developed certainty over take-up,’ says Mr Harper. ‘Not all parents applied as soon as they were eligible and so the local authority allowed eligible parents to backdate claims to the beginning of the half-term in which they applied, although this has only applied to a few families.’

Portsmouth was asked by the Government to use the pilot in particular to explore ways of using the 30 hours to incentivise parents back to work. ‘We put together a steering group including Job Centre Plus, and a couple of charities such as the YMCA, which delivers a number of nurseries in Portsmouth, and looked at a range of different options, focusing on helping parents gain core skills such as maths and literacy,’ says Mr Harper. ‘There was a lot of work already going on with this in children’s centres for example, so we linked with their programmes. We have also spent time with Job Centre Plus staff, to increase their knowledge of the 30 hours so they can use it as an incentive to support parents into work, or to increase their hours.’

The local authority has provided business support to settings through one-to-one sessions with the development team and workshops. ‘We have supported settings to get a better understanding of their individual unit cost, planning and being creative with structures – perhaps increasing the hours they are open, or becoming more flexible,’ explains Mr Harper.

CHILDMINDERS IN DEMAND

Portsmouth is the only city in the British Isles with a greater population density than London, and the UK’s only island city. It also houses the largest dockyard for the Royal Navy and is home to two-thirds of the UK’s surface fleet. With these shifts in population, childminders are also expecting to be highly in demand.

‘Childminders are crucial if the 30 hours are to be delivered successfully in the long term,’ says Mr Harper. ‘Because of the high numbers of forces families, a large proportion of the population work shifts and need flexible childcare, which childminders are more able to offer than many group-based settings. Many also work at the hospital. Also, accommodation is tricky to come by in the area [for] expansion or new group-based provision.’

There are 105 childminders in Portsmouth and around 70 per cent take funded children, according to Mr Harper. The local authority is testing a range of ways in which childminders can be supported to deliver the 30 hours. An investigation into the viability of larger childcare providers establishing a childminder agency proved unsustainable when settings said they didn’t see any benefits to themselves in the plan. However, the local authority’s nursery for children with special educational needs and disabilities has partnered with a number of childminders to offer continuous childcare over holiday periods, and the council is also just about to trial a memorandum of understanding scheme, which it hopes will enable groups of childminders to work in partnership with other providers.

‘It is about formally agreeing how they will share information about a child; how they will manage the transition between settings and so on,’ says Mr Harper.

CASE STUDY: TOPS DAY NURSERIES

The Tops Day Nurseries group has two settings in Portsmouth. Lakeside North Harbour is located opposite a business park in a new, eco-friendly building, and Tops Portsmouth is based on the Queen Alexandria Hospital Campus. Both settings look after children from the age of three months.

When the pilot scheme rolls out to working parents earning less than £100,000, it will cover most if not all of the three- and four-year-olds in the company’s Portsmouth nurseries, says Cheryl Hadland, managing director of Tops Day Nurseries. However, the changes in eligibility during the trial period have caused a few headaches, she explains.

‘The local authority has been flexible with the funding and allowed claims to be backdated,’ she explains. ‘We were able to sort it out without offering refunds as all the children involved were attending for more than 30 hours, so we could take the money from future attendance, but we could really do without that extra red tape.’

Ms Hadland says the current hourly rate of £4.88 is sustainable, but she is concerned about the reduction to £4.09 in September. ‘It won’t be sustainable then,’ she says. ‘We will have to introduce an additional extras charge. We are quite open, we tell parents it costs us a certain amount per hour to deliver a place and that the Government offers us less than that, and what the difference is, and we call that charge additional extras, covering what we offer that is above and beyond the Early Years Foundation Stage.’

Extras that Tops will charge funded children for include yoga and football. ‘We have an electronic messaging service to parents sending pictures throughout the day that is popular but not required by the EYFS,’ says Ms Hadland. ‘We have always charged extra for meals.’

Like all settings, Tops is required to offer a basic 30 hours service for free, if it is charging for additional services. ‘However, the basic service may not be available when parents want it,’ says Ms Hadland. ‘It was easier to pick out hours to offer a basic service when it was just 15 hours; it will be more of a challenge with 30 hours. When a parent calls and says “Have you got 30 hours?” the answer is always “I need you to come in and tell me what you need, and when”. Settings need to make sure they talk to parents and don’t offer places just like that because otherwise they will go bust.’

The vast majority of parents are understanding, says Ms Hadland. ‘Only one parent out of all the nurseries has not wanted to pay for additional extras; she managed to find a playgroup that delivered the funded hours with no extra charge,’ she says.

Tops also has nurseries in Dorset, which started offering the 30 hours this month, and its other settings will begin offering the service after the national roll-out in September. ‘It’s great for parents, saving them more than £100 a week,’ says Ms Hadland. Although Tops is now more experienced with delivering the 30 hours than settings outside the pilot areas, Ms Hadland is not sure how much that will help come September. ‘We do now have experience of how the computer systems work – or don’t work – we know parents have to get a letter code and how the portal works. That has been useful, but it hasn’t helped us to cope with the lack of funds,’ she concludes.

DOUBLE TIME

James Hempsall, who has the support contract to aid delivery of the 30 hours, talks about Portsmouth

The Portsmouth example highlights many important considerations. I truly believe funding rates will work for most providers. For some, though, it doesn’t naturally and instantly connect with their delivery models, so they need a third way. This can be developed through specialist business support that makes sense of what is possible within the terms of funding contracts with local authorities. General information sessions and briefings are useful. However, they don’t meet everyone’s needs, and neither does generic business support – it has to be early years specific. Clearly in Portsmouth this has been the approach.

Childminders play a vital role in delivery of early entitlements. Recent policy developments ensure childminders have more of a level playing field for offering early learning and childcare, with them no longer being required by local authorities to comply with additional contractual requirements. That said, there are still many unused opportunities for childminders to deliver. The Portsmouth experience reminds us their role is as relevant in cities as in small towns and isolated rural areas.

No community of parents knows the value of all-year-round and flexible provision more than parents of children with SEND. Such parents always tell me how term-time-only provision falls short of their needs, and disrupts their children’s continuity of care, and their ability to work, which has already been severely challenged by having a child in this situation.

The 30 hours will achieve many outcomes for working families and families of children with SEND. We have the potential to make continuing to work viable, making the childcare jigsaw puzzle of finding solutions and combining options easier, and increasing the ability of parents to consider their options, including increasing their hours or taking promotions. The early implementers have shared many ideas about how we achieve this potential, and local authorities are developing their resources and ideas for providers all the time, especially now national guidance and funding rates have been released.