With the summer holidays approaching, it is more important than ever that parents and carers are able to access the financial support they qualify for. It can reduce their costs, help them stay in work, or help them work more hours if they wish to.

To help childcare providers to offer this support, the DfE has produced a new toolkit which will help you to raise awareness of existing government schemes of financial support for childcare. This could in turn help you boost your business.

Over a million families in the UK are entitled to some form of government childcare support, but many are missing out because childcare providers in their area haven’t signed up to accept the various offers.

The toolkit contains a step-by-step guide to ensure that you have all the elements in place for your services to be accessible to families who use government childcare support. It also includes resources to raise awareness of the different offers available amongst families in your networks, whilst advertising that you are one of the providers equipped to accept the different types.

The DfE has formally launched its consultation into changes to early years ratio rules for nurseries and pre-schools and, separately, childminding settings. The consultation document proposes the following changes to the EYFS in relation to ratios: - In group-based settings (nurseries and pre-schools), the legal limit for two-year-olds would increase from four children per adult to five children per adult. - For childminding settings, the section in the EYFS on existing flexibilities on ratios would be changed to state that childminders can care for more than the specified maximum of three children under the age of 5 if they are a) caring for the sibling of another child (including, but no longer limited to, babies) they care for; or b) caring for their own child (again including, but no longer limited to, babies).

In April Ofsted published their strategy for 2022 – 2027, setting out their priorities for the next five years.

This includes a stronger focus on their work in early years, ensuring children get the best start in life.​ A child’s early education lasts a lifetime, and Ofsted are committed to helping make sure every child’s earliest experience of education is as good as it can be. This is particularly important given how much our youngest children have missed out on over the last two years. 

The strategy and HCMI's commentary is available here.

Ofsted has announced a small number of changes to the Early Years Inspection Handbook. The main changes are:  

• the creation of a new section called Part 3: Applying the Education Inspection Framework (EIF) in different contexts, which includes guidance on how to apply the EIF for specific providers such as childminding settings. Ofsted has stressed that this new section is intended to provide greater clarity on how the EIF is already applied in different contexts (for example, a new explanation of the term ‘learning walk’ and what it means in a childminder inspection) but that there has been no change to inspection policy.
• the removal of the previous section on ‘Inspection and the Covid-19 pandemic’, in line with the lifting of government restrictions earlier this year, though paragraphs detailing how inspectors will take Covid-19 into account are still included within the document.

The EYFS framework requires providers to take all necessary steps to keep children safe and well. DfE has published a useful guidance to support providers on the following:

• Food safety advice for children age 5 and under
• Food and drinks to avoid
• Safe weaning
• How to prepare infant formula bottles
• Allergies
• Hygiene