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Bulletin 365

13 October 2025

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

Liquidlogic

Establishment portal – video guide

An establishment portal training video guide is now available to accompany the portal user guide – both are available on our webpage.

Establishment portal – Live Register

If any changes have been made to the Live Register after submitting your headcount, once the headcount has been finalised by the Team, these changes will revert to the data as submitted on your headcount.

For example, changing a child’s record from 12 hours to 18 hours will initially save on the Live Register, however, once the headcount is finalised, the change will be overridden and revert to 12 hours.

Please carefully check your Live Register and submit a midterm change for any amendments required after submitting your headcount.

Business Support

Marketing & Promotion Tips for Early Years Educators 

Marketing and promotion are important tasks for all providers, schools and childminders to support ongoing business sustainability.

Need some inspiration and practical tips? Check out the Childcare Works resources:

-  Early Years Toolkit for marketing advice and guidance. 

-  ‘The 3 Ms of Marketing’ A series of three recorded presentations to support childcare providers with successful marketing and promotion:

1. Market - Who is your target market? Identifies different segments of your market and explores different purchasing roles to help you reach and engage new and potential customers.
2. Message - How to bring all the market information together to create messages for those involved in buying your services.
3. Methods - How marketing activity reaches your target audience in a way that is affordable.

To find out more, click on the button below.

Childcare Workforce Recruitment and Retention – Advice for early years and childcare providers

Childcare Works have developed an 'Advice for early years and childcare providers' guidance to support you with childcare workforce recruitment. The guidance details practical actions providers can take to support childcare workforce recruitment and retention, including recent research.

Please click on the button below for more information. 

Safeguarding

Understanding Child Protection Conferences and planning

Click on the button below to register for the multi-agency session on 6 November.

Online safety

The NSPCC’s Child Safety Online (CSO) Taskforce and Baringa have published new research looking at how businesses can contribute to keeping children safe online. The report discusses society’s attitudes around child safety online, how this influences consumers’ choices and the impact of this on businesses. It sets out practical actions that companies can take to help make the online world safer for children and be more successful in the process.

To find out more, click on the button below.

The Lullaby Trust Infection Prevention Week

This year, from 19 - 25 October, the Lullaby Trust will be discussing how you can work together to prevent infection in babies. The theme for Infection Prevention Week 2025 is ‘never a nuisance’. Too many parents/carers have delay seeking medical help for their baby, due to being worried about “wasting” NHS time.  No parent should hesitate to speak up if they’re worried about their baby. But too often, families worry about being a bother. The Lullaby Trust want to help fix that. Click on the button below to find out how you can get involved.

National Updates

Ofsted consultation response and supporting materials

Ofsted have now published their response to our public consultation on improving the way we inspect education.

Alongside this, they have also published the inspection toolkits, operating guides and supporting information related to their renewed education inspection framework. 

Watch the recorded webinars on their YouTube channel to find out more about the changes to early years inspections from November 2025.

Help the Department for Education (DfE) understand how you check qualifications in early years

The DfE wants to hear from early years educators to understand how they check qualifications. Whether you're a setting manager, childminder, or an educator, your experience matters.

They would love to hear your thoughts by completing the survey below.

https://dferesearch.fra1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0k4DPGMvf8VWrS6

By sharing how you currently approach checking qualifications, you’ll help them design a service that better meets your needs.

Questions? Contact the DfE at research.early-years-quals@education.gov.uk

Join the National Education Nature Park

The National Education Nature Park invites children and young people across the country on an exciting journey to explore, understand and care for nature. Together, they're making their outdoor spaces better for wildlife and their nursery or school community.

This autumn, a tailored version of the Nature Park programme launches for early years settings. Free, quality-assured activities are designed to meet early learning and development goals, while building curiosity, empathy and confidence in the natural world. By taking part, you’ll be supporting children to develop a lifelong connection with nature and the skills to become its future advocates.

The programme has been commissioned by the Department for Education and is led by the Natural History Museum with the Royal Horticultural Society and additional partners, and has seen more than 7,500 schools, colleges and nurseries get involved so far!

Click on the button below to get involved. 

Supporting Children with SEND for Smooth Transitions

Foundation Years are providing an exciting online event designed for early years educators: Supporting Children with SEND for Smooth Transitions

This free event is your chance to hear from inspiring speakers and discover fresh ideas to enhance transition practices for children with SEND in your early years setting. 

📅 When? Thursday 23 October

📍 Where? Microsoft Teams

⏰ Time? 4:30 PM – 6:00 PM

What to expect:

✨ Expert speakers, including representatives from the DfE, Ofsted and Dingley's Promise.

✨ Gain valuable insights to improve transition practices for children with SEND in the early years sector.

Spaces are limited – register now to secure your spot

SEND

Amendment to Early years forum Live Well pages Early Years Forum/SENIF

Please note that updates have been made to pages regarding December Early Years Forum and the deadline times for Early Years Forum and SENIF applications on the pages below.

Early years forum – information for practitioners

SEND Inclusion Funding

Cheshire East Chatters Top Tips

You may have some children who have been with you a few weeks but are not yet talking much in your setting. Cheshire East Chatters have shared some top tips for you below. Top tips:  Consider if they are new to the English language. Provide some visual supports and involve them in activities that do not have a focus on talking.   Find out what they’re interested in and create more opportunities to show talents and preferences in other areas.   Use lots of humour during play! This can ease the pressure in interactions.   Avoid asking direct questions or trying to get them to respond. Instead make E.g. ‘wow a fast car!’  Warmly respond to any types of communication with your natural speech, as if they have spoken.   Avoid comments such as ‘are you going to talk to me today?’ ‘is she shy?’   Allow them to respond by other means e.g. offer choices so they can point to objects or pictures.   Focus on building trust and comfort rather than aiming to get them to speak.   Consider getting further advice if the child’s silence persists past half term.

Have you heard of DLD? 

Friday is Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) Awareness Day . 

2 children in every classroom experience persisting language difficulties. 

To find out more about DLD please click the button below.

Your Future’s Event – SEND Careers Fair Returns!

Wednesday, 19th November | Congleton Leisure Centre

Following the fantastic success of Cheshire East’s first SEND Careers Fair last year, we are delighted to announce the return of the Your Future’s event this November.

This event mirrors the format of a universal careers fair, with a key focus on inclusivity. Support services, educational settings, and employers attending will be showcasing how they champion inclusive practices and support young people in their journey to adulthood. It is never too early to start exploring options and thinking about the future.

Parents, carers, and professionals are warmly welcome to attend during:

• Morning session: 8:30 - 12:00
• Afternoon session: 12:30 - 14:00

This is a brilliant opportunity to explore adult support services and discover how we’re preparing our children for their future. Please share widely across your networks and we’d love to see you there.

Family Hubs

Training

Cheshire East Think Equal information sessions

To join one of our 3 upcoming information sessions to hear more about this free training opportunity, please book a place via your ChESS Early Years Training Hub account.

Autumn Term Training available on the Early Years Training Hub

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

Upcoming training next week:

Owners, Managers and Childminders – 20th October 2025 10:00 - 11:30 (Monks Coppenhall Family Hub) or 23rd October 2025 18:30 - 20:00 (Microsoft Teams)

These networks are for owners, managers and childminders of Early Years and Childcare settings and early years leaders in school. Owners, Managers and Childminders networks are an opportunity to hear the latest updates from our Early Years Team, network with other owners, managers, early years leads and childminders and ask questions.

Safer Recruitment Refresher – 21st October 2025 9:30 - 12:30 (Crewe Lifestyle Family Hub)

Childcare settings share with others a duty to safeguard the children in their care. Implementing safer recruitment practices is one way of discharging this safeguarding obligation. Keeping Children Safe in Education recommends that at least one of the persons who conducts an interview has completed safer recruitment training. This is a half day refresher course for delegates that have completed the whole day course previously. There is no assessment for the refresher. Attendees will need to email a copy of their certificate to: earlyyearsandchildcareteam@cheshireeast.gov.uk

Learning Language in the Outdoors – 22nd October 2025 18:30 - 20:00 (Microsoft Teams)

How does being outdoors make you feel? In this session Cheshire East Chatters discuss the research behind learning in the outdoor environment and introduce their group activities booklet containing lots of exciting, practical activities to support children's communication skills in your outdoor space