NEWS

The government has announced that the amount of support given to businesses to help with energy costs will reduce in April 2023. Under the new scheme business customers will get a discount on wholesale prices of energy. This is a reduction of the current support scheme, which caps the cost at a lower price.

Some sectors that use a high amount of energy, such as manufacturers, will receive a “substantially higher level of support” but there is no targeted support for early years providers.

Neil Leitch, CEO of the Alliance, commented: "While the continuation of some energy support is better than nothing, the harsh reality is that the level of support announced today is unlikely to do much, if anything, to improve the current situation, especially given that the rising cost of energy is only one of a myriad of challenges affecting early years settings.

"With providers also facing severe staffing shortages, record increases in the national minimum and level wage and wider inflationary pressures, it is clear that urgent action is needed to prevent the collapse of our vital sector.”

The government has also not announced any targeted support for home-based businesses, such as childminding professionals, who will be domestic energy customers. Neil commented: “The fact that childminders work out of their homes does not change the fact that they are businesses. As such, it is vital that they are given additional support to ensure they can cope the rising cost of energy. Anything less would be incredibly short-sighted, especially given the government’s current efforts to increase the number of childminding professionals operating in the sector.”

Worryingly, providers also reported an increase in the number of families at their setting struggling with food insecurity. Just under half of those surveyed (49%) said that they had seen an increase in the number of children arriving to their setting hungry. 82% of providers said that they would support the idea of additional government funding specifically for meals and snacks.

Neil Leitch, CEO of the Alliance, said: “Good nutrition is a fundamental part of education. We all rightly argue that no child should be expected to attend school hungry – so why should it be different for children in the early years?”

The Prime Minister made a passing reference to family hubs, saying: “We need to support parents to manage the demands of modern workplaces without breaking the irreplaceable bonds of family life. And we’re going to roll out family hubs to offer parents the support they need.”

However, he did not make any reference to the rest of the early years sector or the funding and staffing concerns that many providers are reporting.

In response to a journalist's question about childcare, the Prime Minister said: "The government and I are completely committed to ensure good affordability, availability and flexibility of childcare. That’s what we’re always looking to deliver and improve on the offers that we have. There’s a consultation out at the moment and we’re in the process of considering some reforms and it wouldn’t be right for me to comment on that now but the fact that I’ve talked about families hopefully gives you and everyone some confidence that I support families in all their forms."

A Number 10 source told The Telegraph: “Childcare and the early years are very important for the PM. He believes education is the closest we have to a silver bullet for making people’s lives better and he is working hard with ministers on improving childcare and the early years provision for the benefit of children and parents.”

Commenting, Neil Leitch, CEO of the Alliance, said: “We know that extending the so-called ‘free entitlement’ offers without significant additional investment into the early years would have placed unsustainable pressure on an already-fragile sector, and that relaxing ratios would have hugely exacerbated the current early years crisis and risked lowering quality in settings, all without saving parents a penny. As such, if reports that these proposals have been scrapped are accurate, this can only be a positive thing.

“That said, the fact that these particular policies were non-starters doesn’t mean that early years reform isn’t urgently needed. As such, it is deeply concerning to hear suggestions that the sector is set to become a lower government priority. The fact is that we currently have a system in this country where parents pay some of the highest prices in the world, while early years professionals remain undervalued and underpaid and are leaving the sector in their droves, and thousands of settings are closing each year. This simply cannot continue.”

The Institute of Health Visiting has warned that a shortage of health visitors is impacting children in England, as its members reported an increase in demand following the Covid-19 pandemic and one in five children missing vital health reviews.

The organisation surveyed 1,323 practitioners in 2022 about their experiences – 85% reported that there are not enough health visitors and 64% said that they had to prioritise the most vulnerable cases, leaving little or no time for early intervention work.

Concerningly, 86% of those asked said that there is not sufficient capacity in other services to pick up onward referrals and 73% said that there are not enough student visitor places to maintain their workforce needs.

A majority of those surveyed also reported high levels of stress, with 78% stating that stress levels had increased in the last 12 months and 70% said that they were feeling “worried, tense and anxious”. Only 15% of those surveyed said that they were able to deliver the 9-12 month review to all their families and just 6% were working with the recommended average of 250 children per health visitor.

Alison Morton, executive director of the Institute of Health Visiting, said: “Through their universal reach, health visitors have a privileged and unique view into the lives of babies, young children and their parents/carers across the UK. Health visitors’ experiences presented in this report provide an important ‘early warning signal’ of the most pressing threats and challenges to the health and wellbeing of our youngest citizens, which are often hidden behind front doors and invisible to other services.”

The DfE has also responded to a recent consultation on early years funding formula changes, which launched last year. The consultation response confirms that the DfE is implementing a number of changes to the early years national funding formula in line with the original consultation proposals.

This includes:

• Year-to-year protections: The DfE has confirmed that all local authorities will see a funding increase of no less than 1% for both three- and four-year-old, and two-year-old, funding.
• Minimum funding floor: In addition, the DfE will be applying a minimum hourly funding rate (called a minimum funding floor) of £4.87 for three- and four-year-old funding, up from the current £4.61.
• Gains cap: To pay for the year-to-year protections, the DfE is proposing to introduce a gains cap (i.e. a limit on how much a local authority’s funding can increase by) of 4.9% for three- and four-year-old funding and 10% for two-year-old funding.
  
  

The Department for Education has responded to a petition, which collected more than 12,000 signatures, calling for increased funding for early years providers. While the DfE admitted that the sector is facing “economic challenges”, it stressed that additional funding has already been announced.

The petitioned called for increased funding in the light of the pending increase to the National Living and Minimum Wages, which will come into effect in April. It said: “We believe Government funding for early years settings is too low, and making it difficult to keep these settings open. This will only be more difficult with the increase in minimum wage. Everyone wants childcare standards high, but we believe more funding is needed to achieve this.”

In its response, the DfE said: “The government remains committed to the future of the early years education sector. We continue to monitor the market closely through a range of research projects, including our annual Childcare and Early Years Providers Survey which gives the government robust evidence on the provider market. The most recent survey was published 9 December 2021 and the latest was published on 15 December 2022. We are also in regular contact with early years sector stakeholders through meetings and working groups and we feed their messages right into the heart of government.”