Agenda item

To provide an overview of early years provision in Brent and an update on progress towards meeting the expansion of childcare entitlements.

Councillor Grahl (Cabinet Member for Children, Young People and Schools) introduced the report, which provided details about the rollout of expanded childcare entitlements within Brent and plans for the distribution of the capital grant allocation provided by the DfE, as well as the approach for delivering the requirement to have a wraparound offer for school-aged children to access childcare between 8am and 6pm during the school term. In introducing the report, she provided further context for why the report was being presented to the Committee, explaining that in the Spring Budget of March 2023, the previous government had announced a significant expansion of early years childcare entitlements and proposals for the development of a wraparound offer for school-aged children. The report outlined the borough-wide response to those new arrangements, which she highlighted were some of the most significant changes in childcare provision for a generation and provided an opportunity for local providers to step up their provision to support families in the early years.

In presenting the report, Councillor Grahl highlighted that the majority of early years provision in Brent was provided by independent nurseries or childminders, with the local authority playing an administrative support role. She advised the Committee that there was excellent provision on offer in Brent and drew attention to figure 3 of the report, which showed that Brent was well placed to meet the extra demand. She conveyed that the early years sector in Brent was strong, with 98% of childminders and 94% of PVI nurseries rated as ‘Good’ or ‘Outstanding’ by Ofsted, and offered thanks to early years providers, noting the importance of the Council and its members fully understanding the contribution providers made to the borough.

In adding to the introduction of the report, Nigel Chapman (Corporate Director Children and Young People, Brent Council) explained that the paper was being brought to the Committee as there had been national interest in the expansion of provision, with media interest in certain areas of the country where parents had reported they had been unable to find childcare provision whilst the expansion had been ongoing, as well as some technical issues with DfE processing. He hoped the report offered reassurance about how Brent had prepared for the expansion and was supporting providers and the parent carer experience of finding an early years place. He acknowledged that the focus for the government had been on getting parents back in to work, but the sector and the Council were keen to use this as an opportunity to ensure there was a focus on good quality childcare and education in early years to set children up well for school and into adult life. He then introduced two colleagues present from the early years sector to tell the Committee about their experience in Brent – Wioletta Bura, a voluntary agency nursery manager, and Dorette Briscoe, an early years childminder.

The Chair welcomed Wioletta and Dorette to the meeting and invited them to share their experience of early years provision in Brent.

Wioletta began her remarks by thanking the Early Years Team and the Inclusion Team for supporting all nurseries and childminders in the borough. She worked closely with the Inclusion Team to identify children with SEND, and her nursery was also supported by the Quality Improvement Team and Specialist Early Years Teachers to support improvement in the quality of childcare for children in nurseries. Dorette advised the Committee that she had previously worked as a teaching assistant in the SENCO department of a school which had led to her role now as a SENCO childminder, understanding the needs of children with SEND and how they could be supported to achieve their full potential.

The Chair thanked presenters for their introductions and invited comments and questions from those present, with the following issues raised:

The Committee began by asking whether the Council had heard any objections from providers to the expansion and what had been done to resolve those concerns. Nigel Chapman responded that there had been no objections. The Council had done a lot of work asking questions of the sector regarding how ready they were and how interested they were in expanding their offer prior to the expansion. Primary schools where there was a nursery attached for 3-4 year olds had not been interested in expanding into the early years sector and were clear they wanted to retain their 3-4 year old groups with private nurseries and childminders taking the lead in expanding those earlier years. Sasi Srinivasan (Early Help Manager, Brent Council) added that some providers had no issues in expanding because they already were providing childcare for babies and very young children. Some of the main challenges raised were around funding rates, as the sector had been lobbying for a while for increases with the view that rates were not enough to cover costs, and recruitment and retention issues. The DfE had subsequently revised rates which had seen a significant increase in rates for childcare provided to 2-year-olds.

Wioletta Bura outlined further the concerns nurseries and childminders had around funding and staffing. She highlighted her colleagues were concerned the rates were not enough to cover costs, as those rates were still tax deductible, and the providers were still required to pay business rates. The increase in the number of younger children and babies would also require additional staffing as well as the increase of children with SEND. Her nursery had 10 staff and 28 children. Five of those children had SEND needs and 3 required 1-1 support for those needs. The nursery also had 6 babies. She highlighted a potential inequity issue as the new expansion had increased the number of working families accessing provision for free and then paying for the remainder of hours, meaning there was less space for non-working families.

Considering the concerns around funding, the Committee asked what providers would consider a reasonable rate. Wioletta Bura suggested that an increase in rates for 3-4 year olds would help cover costs, to £6.50 per hour. The Committee queried the rate structure and why there were different rates between each age group, with younger age groups appearing to have higher rates. Nigel Chapman advised the Committee that the rates were set nationally by government, who had looked to increase the 9-month old to 2-year old rates because that was where the sector needed to increase places. Ratios were another factor in why more money needed to be allocated to younger age groups, as younger children and babies would require more staff with smaller ratios. The Schools Forum looked at early years funding arrangements and what could be done locally, but there was a limited envelope around the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) covering the early years block, and the Council was overspent on the DSG as a result of SEND pressures. This meant the room for manoeuvre was limited, but the Council did accept that the sector was underfunded, particularly for 3–4-year-olds. The Early Years Alliance was lobbying at a national level for improved funding, pushing for a sector that looked to improve the quality of education and childcare as well as help get parents into work. The Committee agreed to refer the matter to the Budget Scrutiny Task Group due to take place across the next few months to see whether there was any way of using funding differently to improve hourly rates.

The Committee asked whether the support given to providers was the same across all or whether it was tailored to the individual needs of the provider. Serita Kwofie (Head of Early Help, Brent Council) explained that the Early Years Team worked closely with providers to understand their sufficiency and how they wanted to account for the additional families wanting to take up places, planning how to ensure there was adequate space for additional places. Providers were being supported to apply for capital grants to adapt their spaces to do that. The changes by the DfE had also introduced a change in ratios, so the Early Years Team worked with providers so that they had adequate staff capacity at the new ratios. There was a team of Advisory Teachers and Childcare Development and Business Support Officers who worked with childminders, allocated based on geography. Each of those officers had a number of settings they worked with closely and knew well, so that they could support individual concerns. Those officers fed back to the Early Years Team what providers were telling them. As such, the early years team was providing tailored support, recognising that there were differences by ward with some areas having a lot of provision and high vacancy rates whereas other had long waiting lists. The team was able to break down data by ward to see where there was lower take-up compared to other wards and were working to understand why that was and how those areas could be targeted so that the team could understand their barriers and work with communities to help them take up provision. The team would begin interrogating that data to understand demand to take localised approaches and work with partners to target particular areas.

In responding to how providers found the support offered by the local authority, Wioletta Bura responded that she had found the support to be great. She highlighted that all providers across the borough had received reminders about the capital funding scheme applications and every provider could request a Business Support Co-Ordinator to help with the application. In addition, early years teachers were coming into settings to support staff in understanding child development and giving staff actions to monitor the progress of children. The Inclusion Team also came into settings to provide a good understanding of SEND. Where she had concerns that a child might have additional needs she would invite her Early Years Inclusion Support worker who would observe the child, give the nursery some strategies to implement, and then alongside the Inclusion Team, nursery and parents of the child make a decision on whether a referral was appropriate, get an early diagnosis and apply for an EHCP, all done working as a team. There was also a bulletin sent to all providers which included information about available training. Dorrette Briscoe agreed that the local authority did provide a lot of support. She felt that one improvement that could be made was around the advertisements of local places to ensure they matched the ward boundaries to which they were closest. In addition, less jargon would be more parent friendly. Sasi Srinivasan confirmed that the Council was trying to simplify how parents were informed about local places.

The Committee asked how the Council provided information and support where there was overcapacity of places with large waiting lists, linking parents to other available providers. They heard that the Council did try to gather vacancy information and sufficiency knowledge so that provision could be mapped out, which was requested on a termly basis. Members were advised that not all providers shared that information but where they did the Council could get a picture of provision. The Council then had a statutory duty to offer brokerage, so if a parent was struggling to find childcare, they could call the Early Years Team for information about what was available and where there were local vacancies.

In relation to school nurseries, members highlighted that some had stopped taking children as they were no longer operating. Nigel Chapman confirmed that some schools had found their nursery provision to be no longer viable as not enough children were taking up places, so had taken the decision to close their nursery provision and operate form reception onwards. Some parents had been told that if their child went to a school nursery then they had a better chance of their child being admitted into the school, which officers confirmed was not the case as the school admissions process worked differently. For those who had been placed at school nurseries that had closed, the Council had the brokerage team to inform parents about available places and parents would be encouraged by those schools to contact the local authority to find a suitable local alternative.

The Committee asked for further information in relation to place expansion for breakfast and afterschool clubs, detailed in section 3.5.6 of the report. Sasi Srinivasan explained that this referred to the number of places per site the Council could give a school if they could evidence they would create the new places. Some schools had demand whereas others did not. The application process was open currently and schools had the option of bidding for funds under any one of the criteria listed in the report. She explained that the application round finished the following week so the Council would understand more what the demand was. Members heard that, from work over the summer speaking at school cluster meetings, officers had found that there were some schools who had never had demand and did not see themselves opening provision compared to some schools with waiting lists. The Council was monitoring the demand as more people were required back into the office as it was expected demand would shift again.

Members highlighted an increase in the number of children in Brent accessing food banks. It was highlighted that food banks could very easily anonymise and track data and provide that to Family Wellbeing Centres (FWCs) so that they could see where demand was and what schools those families were using to target those families regarding take-up of breakfast clubs and afterschool clubs. This would enable mapping of demand and where schools had fed back that there was no demand for that provision this could be checked against the data. Councillor Grahl agreed that this was a valuable suggestion which could be picked up in the work currently being undertaken on the Food Strategy. The use of breakfast and afterschool clubs within this report was focused on them as an option for childcare, and whilst they were places that some people relied on as a way out of food poverty those 2 cohorts were not always the same. As such, she agreed that a joined-up approach to tackling food poverty across the borough would be useful. Nigel Chapman added that there was an expectation when the Children’s Wellbeing Bill was announced that there would be an expansion of the universal provision of breakfast clubs across all primary schools with an expectation that every primary school would provide free breakfast clubs for all pupils.

In noting that a risk of expansion was low take up of the new offer, the Committee asked what work was being done to make parents and families aware of the scheme, particularly hard to reach communities or families whose first language was not English. Serita Kwofie advised members that the team was working closely with community providers and organisations to ensure information was provided about the places available and the change to provision to ensure there was good take-up. Messaging was going through Family Wellbeing Centres (FWCs), and the Council was using data from FWCs so that where it was known there were young children that information was readily available to the families. There were connections with each community provider across the borough so that the Early Years Team were aware of families with young children outside of FWCs and information was available in different languages. In terms of take-up in hard to reach areas, the Committee heard that this was an ongoing process. There was now good engagement in a number of areas and the team continued to review that to ensure improvements. For example, the team was working closely with families of Somalian heritage and community providers to ensure information was disseminated and that the team was available at different settings in their spaces so that parents and families were comfortable coming forward for information.

The Chair thanked those present for their contributions and drew the item to a close. He invited members to make recommendations with the following RESOLVED:

i)              In relation to advertisements of local early years places, to ensure these included the full location details of the provider.

ii)             To recommend that officers working on the Food Strategy looked to further utilise data from food banks to map where provision of breakfast and afterschool clubs is required.

iii)           To recommend that the Budget Scrutiny Task Group reviewed the hourly base rate for early years provision, particularly for 3-4 year olds.

iv)           To endorse an approach where sufficiently profiles are completed when new developments are approved through the planning process.

v)            To recommend early years officers contacted voluntary and community sector organisations who had data on children and families whose first language was not English so that information regarding provision could be disseminated to those families.