Nursery Management: Free entitlement - Two-year-olds pose challenge

The Government's change of focus in the provision of free nursery care and education for two-year-olds is creating new challenges for local authorities and early years providers.

'When we took part in the pilot, our original offer was for 80 places for two-year-olds for 7.5 hours a week,' says Janet Hicks, head of Early Childhood Services in Newham. 'That has now been extended to 211 places for 15 hours.

'The focus now is on low income, and that is entirely correct. We have a huge number of low-income disadvantaged children. The difficulty is in the process. Now when parents are offered a place they have to provide information about their income and benefits, which most of the parents - and the practitioners doing the assessments - don't like and find embarrassing.

'The focus before was on the needs of the child and what they could gain from the early education and care, as well as providing respite for the parents.

'Now it is about prioritising those on low income and this has slowed down take-up. This change in criteria is creating an extra barrier. People don't like talking about their benefits and income, and people don't like asking.

'The Government has issued guidance that places for two-year-olds can only be funded in settings graded as "good" or "outstanding" by Ofsted. I completely understand that vulnerable children need the best-quality support, education and care they can get. But areas of disadvantage like Newham are less likely to have such a strong range of good and outstanding providers,' says Ms Hicks.

'This change is another complicated nuance. When there is a whole range of different things coming together you can get a very complicated picture. We often find we have the Department for Children, Schools and Families rolling out initiatives separately and we have to connect them up, which can be challenging.

'What we are working towards in Newham is developing a holistic approach to provide families with as much support as possible. Our priority is to improve services so that we have a greater and better impact on the quality of life of children and their families.

'There has been an issue of whether children on the two-year-old nursery education grant can stay on in the same setting as three-year-olds. Sometimes parents want to move their child into a school nursery, and sometimes providers do not have the right balance of places available.

'We did really well on the initial pilot, where we managed to fill all the places. At our children's centres, we have Every Child Matters meetings where we pull together the key staff. We made a good start and implemented the pilot quickly, as through these meetings we already knew the children who had significant needs and would perhaps benefit from attending part-time provision. We did not have to go out and identify them.

'With the pilot for two-year-olds, we focused on disabled children. We used our existing multidisciplinary meetings to identify children who could benefit. We offered support to the parents, some of whom had never left their children before, and for the settings, because some were not used to dealing with disabled children. We offered extra training and resources and some transition funding.

'We had some very good evaluations from the parents on what it did for them and their children. It provided respite, both for the parents and the children,' adds Ms Hicks.

'When the pilot started, we were targeting disadvantaged children with the view that this would give them a good start and improve their life chances. It has now changed and is focusing on low-income families with the view to providing childcare to enable the parents to get back into training and work.'