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Bulletin 348

28 April 2025

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

Business Support

Provider Portal

The Provider Portal is open for you to add new starters for the summer term 2025.  Any children added will be included in balancing payments.

Interim Funding Payments

Interim funding payments have been made – you can view payment details on the Provider Portal under Funding.

Staff Contacts

Staff contacts need to be kept up to date – please check you have the correct contacts for FEEE administrator and FEEE contract signatory.

Safeguarding and Welfare Requirements

Safeguarding and Welfare Requirements: Focus on...

Providers and Childminders must follow their legal responsibilities under the Equality Act 2010 including the fair and equal treatment of practitioners regardless of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation.

National updates

Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) nutrition guidance changes from September 2025

The Department for Education is committed to ensuring that all children in early years settings have the best possible start in life. As part of this, they are introducing new nutrition guidance in the EYFS statutory framework, which will replace the ‘Examples menus for early years settings in England’ guidance from September 2025.

The new guidance has been developed with nutrition and sector experts. It will help early years providers understand how to meet the existing EYFS requirement: ‘Where children are provided with meals, snacks and drinks, these must be healthy, balanced and nutritious’.

Good nutrition in the early years is crucial for setting the foundations for a lifetime of good health. From September 2025, providers will be required to have regard to the new nutrition guidance, meaning they must take it into account and should follow it unless there is good reason not to.  

To read the new nutrition guidance, click on the button below.

Childcare Works free webinars for Early Years settings

Childcare Works are providing live sessions for you to find out more about the new Early Years Toolkit, covering:

• The free resources and information available to make sure your nursery, school or setting is ready for the roll-out of expanded early years entitlements in September 2025
•  Practical support and fast access to information on a range of topics including business planning and meeting the needs of children with SEND.

These informal and friendly sessions are for:

• Early years setting managers, leaders and owners
• School leaders who have, or are considering developing their early years provision
• Childminders
• Everyone who wants to learn more about how to start, grow and sustain an early years setting

Click on the links below to sign up:

Tuesday 6th May 2025, 7pm to 8pm

or

Wednesday 11th June 2025, 12 to 1pm

NOTE: These two webinars will contain the same information and presentations. Please sign up for just one of the live sessions.

For more information, click on the button below.

Childcare Works free webinars for Wraparound childcare providers

Join one of the Childcare Works live sessions for wraparound childcare providers and find out about the guidance and information available to support you and your out of school club or childminding business - including breakfast clubs, after school clubs, holiday clubs and playschemes. It's an opportunity for you to find out more about the new Wraparound Toolkit, covering:

• practical support and fast access to information tailored for all kinds of wraparound childcare providers - whatever the size of your wraparound provision or setting
• a carefully curated collection of free resources to support your business planning and the sustainability of your provision or club
• free resources available to you on a broad range of topics including activity planning, providing food for children and meeting the needs of children with SEND. 

These informal and friendly sessions are for:

• childminders
• school leaders who have, or are considering developing their wraparound provision
• wraparound childcare business owners, managers and leaders
• everyone who wants to learn more about how to start, grow and sustain a wraparound childcare business.

The webinars will feature guest presenter:

• Craig Jones, Community Partnerships Director, Junior Adventures Group (provider of before, during and after-school activity clubs and holiday clubs)

Click on the links below to sign up:

Wednesday 14th May 2025, 12 to 1pm

or 

Tuesday 10th June 2025, 7pm to 8pm

NOTE: These two webinars for wraparound providers will contain the same information and presentations. Please sign up for just one of the live sessions on offer.

For more information, please click on the button below.

EYFS Learning and Development

SEND

Cheshire East Chatters

Family Hubs

Drop-In with the Educational Psychology Service

Family Hubs are pleased to facilitate appointments with the Educational Psychology Service. Appointments can be booked using the information below. Parents should be made aware that a brief outline of the appointment will be shared with the child’s setting via the SENCO or nominated practitioner.

Continuous Professional Development

Problems with Teams during Cheshire East training

Last term we were notified of several problems with Microsoft Teams during Cheshire East training sessions. Some of the issues have been that Teams will not let practitioners past the lobby, and practitioners are unable to see the slides shared on the screen. As our training for summer term is due to start this week, please ensure you have installed the latest version of Microsoft Teams before attempting to join a training session. If you already have the latest version and are experiencing issues, please check if your Microsoft Teams needs an update, try logging onto the training using the Edge web browser, or try a different device.

Summer Term Training now available on the Early Years Training Hub

The ChESS Early Years Training Hub has been updated with lots of training opportunities for the summer term, please take a look and book on now!

Upcoming training next week:

Step Inside the Toddler Room – 6th May 2025 14:00 - 16:00 (Oakenclough Family Hub)

This session is part of a series focussing on supporting the three different age groups of children within the Early Years. Don’t miss out - “staff attended training that extended their knowledge about meeting the needs of two-year-old children. The training was a valuable opportunity” (Ofsted, 2023). This training is for all practitioners working with toddlers and will provide the skills and child development knowledge needed to work with this unique age group. Step Inside the Toddler Room training will cover what you need to know about child development at 2, how 2-year-olds like to learn, the physical environment and supporting feelings and emotions.

Positive Handling – 7th May 2025 14:00 - 16:00 (Oakenclough Family Hub)

Join Damien Sweeney, Headteacher and Hannah Leighton, Assistant Headteacher from Cornerstone Academy for a session on Positive Handling. We understand that it can be difficult for staff working with young children to have the confidence to work with dysregulated children when positive handling may be required. As part of our outreach service, we offer to deliver training on how to confidently and effectively use positive handling techniques. The training is delivered by qualified tutors who have had first hand experiences of using positive handling within a school setting. During the training, we will explain the laws and legislations around positive handling and teach how to safely use positive handling.

Delivering Small Groups – 8th May 2025 9:30 - 11:30 (Microsoft Teams)

Together with our specialist Speech and Language Therapists you will explore ways to set up small groups focussing on the development of attention and listening skills as well as language skills and vocabulary. You will learn more about how to identify children for the groups as well as sharing thoughts and ideas around using a total communication approach to support children to engage with the activities. Attention and Listening and Vocabulary session planning booklets are included with this training as well as lists of necessary equipment.