Our nurseries have been chosen by the LEA to allow us to offer places for those children eligible for the 15 hours funded education at the age of 2 years. The funding for 2 year olds meets a different funding eligibility and is offered only to either low income families, families on specific benefits or children with special needs.
To find out if your child is eligible, please go to the Childcare Choices website, where you will be given information on the eligibility criteria and given the link to apply online. Alternatively, please contact one of our settings and we can complete an application form with you and send this to the Family Information Service.
For children who have been successful in applying for the 2 year funding, you will be sent a letter to your home address. In order to confirm your place with us, we will need to see sight of this letter and take a photocopy for our own records. The funding will then start the term after the child turns 2 years old.
Just like the 3 year funding, 15 hours can be allocated to fit around the nurseries funding offer, either on a term time only basis or stretched to provide 11 hours childcare per week all year round. This is often better for young children as they do not have long gaps in their care which may be unsettling for their routines. Our staff are happy to discuss each families requirements upon enrolment.
All children aged 3 years and over can claim the 15 hours universal funding from the term after their 3rd birthday. These funded childcare hours are the same hours that a child would access if they attended a school nursery. We are inspected by Ofsted and the LEA to ensure we offer the same learning and development as school nurseries.
We offer a staffing ratio of 1 to 8 for our 3 year olds, which is often higher than school nurseries and we also offer the 15 hours more flexibly than the traditional school hours. At Tallulah Beau Day Care you can of course access funded hours based in 3 hours a day, AM or PM or we offer longer sessions to meet modern family’s needs. Our longer sessions include a full morning which covers lunch time, full afternoons and also full days (totally 15 hours). We are also able to stretch funding to cover all of the school holidays so that your child does not receive any gaps in their care, this is fantastic for working parents/carers. This is organised by offering children 11 hours a week but over the full school year, not just the tradition 38 weeks.
Some children may also qualify for 15 hours extended funding (30 hours in total). This is dependent on your household income. Many parents/carers are eligible for this funding if both parents/carers or one parent in single parent families, work more than 16 hours per week. To find out if you are eligible, please go onto the childcare choice’s website. You can only apply for this online and you must have a valid email address. You will be asked to register for an account with childcare services when applying for the extended funding.
Should you be eligible, you will be given an 11-digit validation code. You will need to bring the code, your national insurance number and your child’s date of birth to your chosen setting. We will require you to complete a consent form before contacting the Early Years team who will then validate your code and provide us with a start date.
If you would like your child to access the extended hours you must apply before the start of term. Any applications made after the beginning of term will not be able to start until the beginning of the following term regardless of the child’s date of birth. This is the government guidelines and can not be altered. For example, if your child’s birthday is 24th July and you applied for the funding 15th September, you would not have access to the funding until January. If you applied for the funding before 31st August, your child’s place would be reserved ready to start in September. The funding rules are sometimes complicated, please contact us should you need any help with this.
The 30 hours funded offer is provided for 38 weeks of the year, however like the universal offer, we can take this as a stretched offer across the full year. This works out at 22 hours per week. You also have the option to split the funding across 2 settings or schools, but if you were to choose this option, you have to attend either term time at both settings or stretched sessions at both settings. You can not attend term time at one and stretched at another.
Each of our nurseries has its own ‘Funding Offer’ relating to how we accommodate funded hours into our day and fee structure. Please contact our settings direct to discuss how we can make your childcare needs as affordable as possible with the use of your funded sessions.