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Bulletin 282

5 September 2023

Welcome to our Early Years and Childcare bulletin. Previous bulletins are available at: Cheshire East Early years and Childcare Bulletin

Business Support

Free Early Education Entitlement – Autumn Term Data

The portal is now open again for you to add any additions or adjustments to your autumn term data. It will remain open until Friday 29 September.  

Transferring from 2-year-old funding to Early Years Pupil Premium (EYPP)

A child in receipt of 2-year-old funding will not automatically receive Early Years Pupil Premium when they start claiming early years funding for 3- and 4-year-olds, this is because an EYPP eligibility check must be undertaken.  

Before claiming early years funding, parents are required to complete a parental declaration form which has the option to provide their personal data and consent for an EYPP eligibility check.

When submitting child data via the Provider Portal, settings must ensure that, where appropriate, parent details are entered, and the consent box is ticked confirming that parents have provided consent for their data to be used for an EYPP eligibility check. Please note, the consent box cannot be ticked on the Provider Portal if the parental declaration form consent box has not also been ticked.

Please share the EYPP parent leaflet with families EYPP-parent-leaflet.pdf.

Primary School Admission Applications Open

Applications are now open for children starting primary school. Parents are strongly advised to apply for three preferences.

Applications must be submitted to the child’s home local authority by:

• 15 January 2024 for pupils starting primary in September 2024.

Parents still need to apply even if the child has a brother or sister already at the school or the child is attending a nursery/preschool attached to the school. Some faith schools may also require parents and carers to submit a supplementary information form/confirmation of baptism.  Further information about this will be available on the school’s website.

Parents should consider how their child will travel to school when making preferences.  Parents can find out about school transport at Free and subsidised school transport (cheshireeast.gov.uk)

To apply online and for further information please go to Application process for starting school in September (cheshireeast.gov.uk)  or call 0300 123 5012.

For up to date information please direct parents to follow our twitter @CE_Admissions and follow The Family Information Service – @FISCheshireEast or Family Information Service (Cheshire East Council) - Home | Facebook

Supporting good governance at Cheshire East Council

Do you have practical experience in financial management or accountancy? Are high standards of ethical behaviour important to you? If so, we're looking for an independent member to sit on our Audit and Governance Committee - helping to support good governance at Cheshire East Council. Specific training will be provided. Deadline: Friday 8 September Find out more and apply here

Safeguarding and Welfare Requirements

Early Years Prevent duty training

The Prevent Engagement Officer for Liverpool City Council will be running a Prevent training session for early years providers on Thursday 28 September 10-11.30am on Microsoft teams. 

This free training will cover the Prevent duty, different extremist ideologies that can lead to terrorism and the risk around radicalisation and your supportive role. Please book on via the Chess hub.

Safeguarding Document Updates

The following early years documents have been updated and are now available on our website:

• Single central record
• Safeguarding and welfare requirements audit
• Latest safeguarding scenario

Safeguarding and Welfare Requirements: Focus on...

Records must be easily accessible and available (these may be kept securely off the premises). Confidential information and records about staff and children must be held securely and only accessible and available to those who have a right or professional need to see them. Providers must be aware of their responsibilities under the Data Protection Legislation and where relevant the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Keeping Children Safe in Education 2023

Keeping Children Safe in Education has been updated and comes into force on 1 September 2023.

Department for Education

Updated Early Years Foundation Stage published

The Department for Education has published a new statutory framework for the early years foundation stage, which will apply from September 4th 2023. It contains the following changes:            

• Statutory minimum staff-to-child ratios in England for two-year-olds will change from one adult to four children (1:4) to one adult to five children (1:5);
• Childminders can care for more than the specified maximum of three young children if they are caring for siblings of children they already care for, or if the childminder is caring for their own child;
• The framework clarifies that 'adequate supervision' while children are eating means that children must be within sight and hearing of an adult.

Department for Education launches early years child development training

The Department for Education has launched a free online early years child development training course aimed at childminders, nursery practitioners and nursery managers. The flexible online training has been developed in consultation with early years experts and provides a greater understanding of child development. The training gives practical advice for supporting children in early years settings includes opportunities to reflect on your practice reinforces your understanding through learning check questions and tests allows you to pause and restart the training at any time offers the chance to download certificates of achievement for each module The first 5 modules of the training are available now. Further modules will be added throughout 2023.

New Ofsted blog on pathway to registration

Ofsted have published a new blog on changes to the registration process for early years providers.

EYFS Learning and Development

Bookstart Heritage Open Days

SEND

Early years consultation on SEND network meetings

The early years team would like your views on starting an Early Years SENCO network meeting to facilitate settings sharing best practice and overcoming inclusion barriers.

Please could you fill in this short form to express your views so we can ensure that the meetings meet the needs of most early years providers:

https://forms.office.com/e/6nmsuBGDhn 

SEND partnership events for early years stakeholders

Dear colleagues,

As you may be aware, Cheshire East Council were invited to be part of the Delivering Better Value programme that was announced by the Department for Education (DfE) in February 2022.  The programme was designed to provide dedicated support to help 55 local authorities where substantial deficit issues have been identified.

There has been various phases of the Delivering Better Value programme. As part of the diagnostic phase, we had the opportunity to apply for a one-off transformational grant of approximately £1 million. The Delivering Better Value programme will support Cheshire East to identify local and national opportunities to improve the outcomes for children and young people with SEND.

We are now moving into the implementation phase of the programme, where we will be looking to plan and shape the changes required, to enable us to become more sustainable. As part of this, we will be hosting a number of launch events to bring colleagues up to speed with the programme and proposed changes over the next two years.

There will be two SEND partnership events for early years stakeholders. The event will look at the SEND inspection framework, share the outcomes from the Delivering Better Value programme and how this will be aligned to the SEND Strategy. If you would like to book on to one of these sessions, please use one of the booking links below.

DSG/SEND Strategy Engagement Event - Early Years Stakeholders Tickets, Fri 29 Sep 2023 at 10:00 | Eventbrite

DSG/SEND Strategy Engagement Event - Early Years Stakeholders Tickets, Fri 29 Sep 2023 at 13:00 | Eventbrite

Please note: there is a maximum of two spaces per setting.

SEND Consultations

If you would like to book an SEND consultation, please email earlyyearsandchildcareteam@cheshireeast.gov.uk

You will be sent paperwork to complete, once that is completed and returned you will be offered an SEND consultation slot.

Department for Education Level 3 Early Years SENCO training

The Department for Education is delighted to announce that we are expanding our fully-funded, accredited Level 3 Early Years SENCO training offer.

An additional 2,000 places are available between now and August 2024, with particular focus on training SENCOs in areas currently underrepresented in training uptake, including the North East and North West of England.

This offer is part of the early years education recovery programme and will mean up to 7,000 SENCOs will be trained by August 2024.

Existing Early Years SENCOs with a Level 3 EY educator qualification, or those due to take up the role of SENCO, including childminders, are eligible for the training.

To apply and find out more, please visit: Early Years SENCO - Level 3 | Best Practice Network

Cheshire East Chatters

Cheshire East Chatters Talking Walk-in's

Please share the information below with parents. The Talking Walk-in's are opportunities for parents to speak with a Speech and Language Therapist to receive advice and guidance to support their child at home.

Parenting Journey

Family Hub and Parenting Journey updates

There is a new menu of offer available with some new courses which you can refer into such as HENRY.  There is also new referral form these are available in at www.cheshireeast.gov.uk/pjguidance

Continuous Professional Development

Training opportunities

The Chess hub has been updated with lots of training opportunities up until December, please take a look and book on now!

Some training available in the next few weeks:

Safeguarding Basic Awareness - 12th September 2023 6.30-8.30pm (Teams)

This two hour training course will provide basic information and understanding about safeguarding children. It has been specifically written to address safeguarding in Early Years and Childcare Settings and covers practice and procedures used within Cheshire East.

Understanding the EIF and the Learning Walk - 19th September 2023 9.30-11.30am (Teams)

This two hour online session will give providers an opportunity to consider Ofsted’s Education Inspection Framework in the light of the new Early Years Foundation Stage framework.

Wellcomm - 20th September 2023 9.30am-3pm (Oakenclough Family Hub)

During session there will be opportunities to discuss and define terms relating to communication and how these relate to the WellComm screening tool, examine the rationale behind using WellComm to screen, track and monitor individual children and discuss the practicalities of setting up targeted groups. 

Let's get Outside - 27th September 2023 1-3pm (Teams)

Join us to get ideas about how you can enhance your outdoor learning environment to give children the opportunity and space to explore and investigate. All attendees will receive a copy of our ‘Let’s Get Outside’ toolkit to help enhance their outdoors no matter how small, large, man-made or natural it may be.

Difficult Safeguarding Conversations - 4th October 2023 9.30-11.30am (Teams)

A Bright Start for Every Deaf Child: Together We Can for Deaf Children

The National Deaf Children’s Society are running four live and free online sessions to give those working in the early years information and ideas to support deaf children.  Whether you currently have deaf children in your setting or not, these sessions will help you reflect on your practise and equip you to be ready for deaf children now or in the future.

They will cover how deafness impacts development, language and communication, acoustics and lighting, deaf awareness techniques, behaviour and identity.

The sessions cover:

1. Implement Effective Transitions for Deaf Children: 13 September 6-7:30pm on Zoom
2. Improve Language and Communication for Deaf Children: 20 September 6-7:30pm on Zoom
3. See Parents as Partners: 27 September 6-7:30pm on Zoom.
4. Support Social and Emotional Development for Deaf Children: 4 October 6-7:30pm on Zoom

You will also receive two recorded webinars on sensory storytelling and using basic BSL if you attend one or more of the four.

Find more information and register here:

Don't Forget!

Early Years Training Hub – reminder to sign up

Thank you to everyone who has already signed up to the new Early Years Training Hub. If you haven’t yet signed up, please do so now.  You can sign up by accessing this link:

Chess Early Years Training Hub (sla-portals.co.uk)

Then click on the SIGN UP link on the top right hand side of the login page.

The Provider Login button on our Early Years and Childcare Training Resources (cheshireeast.gov.uk) webpage will also give you access to the new Early Years training Hub.

Through our Training and Events page you can find information about the training and CPD offer available to Early Years practitioners in Cheshire East. You can access the Hub via the link on our training web page:  however you will need to request personal login details by signing up to the Hub.

Please note: If you already have access to the Schools Chess Hub you do not need to sign up again however please email us to request additional access user rights to the Early Years Hub.