Early Years and Childcare Broadcast

West Sussex County Council sent this bulletin at 01-01-2020 04:00 PM GMT

Early Years and Childcare Broadcast header

With you, with the child. Every step of the way.

Weekly broadcast for Early Years and childcare providers in West Sussex from West Sussex County Council - Early Help Service

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Wednesday 1 January 2020

Mandatory Early Years Census 2020

The Online Provider Portal (OPP) opens tomorrow (2 January) for you to complete your Early Years Census Form 2020.

Every year we carry out the Early Years Census for the Department for Education (DfE). The Census is important because it is used to calculate the funding West Sussex County Council receives for free early education.

The Census is mandatory for Free Entitlement providers claiming funding for at least one child in the Spring term.

Complete your Census between 2-24 January via the OPP. Please read this further information and guidance.

Why not watch our simple guide to completing your census on YouTube (6 minutes). A PDF help guide is also available.

Note these common mistakes:

If you are a childminder claiming Free Entitlement, on page 3 of the form, please remember to include yourself as a member of staff working with children under 5 years of age.
When recording staff qualifications, only the highest qualification per staff member is to be recorded.

If you have any questions or require assistance, please contact the Family Information Service on 01243 777807 and ask for the Specialist Team, or e-mail free.entitlement@westsussex.gov.uk

Spring term Free Entitlement actuals claims

The Online Provider Portal (OPP) is opening tomorrow (Thursday 2 January) for Spring term Free Entitlement (FE) actuals claims.

To ensure you submit your claims correctly please refer to the Actuals help guide and YouTube video, which also cover how to submit Disability Access Fund (DAF) and Early Years Pupil Premium (EYPP) claims.

Extended FE claims:

Parents must have applied for their 30 hour code before 31 December in order to claim Extended FE in Spring term.
Codes are valid for Spring term if the code ‘start date’ is before 1 January 2020 and the ‘Grace period end date’ covers the Spring term (31 March 2020).
You can carry out an instant 30 hour code check using the ‘Online eligibility checker’ on the OPP. Watch our YouTube help guide which shows you how to instantly check if a 30 hour code is valid.

Headcount day: Thursday 16 January 2020

Final deadline for return: Wednesday 29 January 2020.

Please note, we will be unable to process any claims which miss this deadline for children who are in attendance during Headcount week.

For further information please read the document entitled ‘Additional information for providers pdf’ at: www.westsussex.gov.uk/ecsfreeentitlement.

If you have any queries please email free.entitlement@westsussex.gov.uk

Free Entitlement – Top Tips for a smooth submission process

As mentioned in the above article, we have comprehensive written and video guidance about how to submit Free Entitlement Actuals claims available on our website. In this article we would like to draw your attention to some Top Tips to help make sure that the claims you make are as accurate as possible.

Sharing Funding Between Settings

For children that are splitting funding between two or more settings, please double-check that each provider is clear on who is claiming what hours, and how this is split if the child is eligible for Extended Hours. Universal and Extended hours have separate allowances of 570 hours each to use across a child’s eligibility year and so the hours must be entered into the correct boxes on the claim.

Higher Quality Data Entry

Please be reminded that when claiming for children, they should be entered with:

Full legal names
Full addresses
The ‘Present at Census’ box ticked.

This will enable us to ensure that various checks are carried out correctly and that deprivation supplements are applied to eligible children.

No Claim This Term? Please Log in and Check Anyway

If you no longer have any children to claim for, please log in and check your headcount. We carry forward children’s details from the previous term, so these need to be deleted. By doing this, it will save you getting chased for submission.

Submission Timing

The portal is open for four weeks to submit your data. However, please do not leave it until the last minute to submit as if you encounter problems, they might not be able to be resolved in time. We suggest that you use the first three weeks to enter and submit your data, then use the last week to check your submission to ensure everything is correct.