Newsletter for Out of School providers in West Sussex
#4/2025 - Monday 16 June 2025
This newsletter includes:
- National Wraparound Childcare Programme Grant Funding
- Monitoring visits
- Management information survey - grant funded providers only
- Working together to safeguard children - update
- Out of School Alliance - one year free membership
- Careers in early years and childcare website
- Early Years Training – funding for one free paediatric first aid training per setting
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Wraparound Childcare Programme Grant Funding applications are still available. The summer term 2025 window is open until Friday 11 July 2025. This could be the last chance for you to apply for a share of £4.5 million.
To support the continued expansion provision, the Early Years and Childcare team, along with a number of key stakeholders, have produced guidance for establishing early years and childcare provision in schools. It will support you with your wraparound childcare plans, from the initial planning stage through to opening your provision.
Please visit the Wraparound Childcare Programme Funding web page for further information and to apply (by the Friday 11 July 2025 deadline).
If you have any questions, please email: Wraparound.Childcare@westsussex.gov.uk.
All successful grant applications and awards are subject to a monitoring visit from an Early Years and Childcare Advisor (EYCA). Monitoring visits take place this term for any provision where funding was awarded in the autumn 2024 or spring 2025 terms and are in at least their second term of operation.
The visit is not an inspection. Your EYCA will be looking at the overall quality of your provision and environment, as well as how you safeguard children. Most importantly they will be focusing on the fun, interactions and play opportunities for the children who attend.
The remaining 30% grant payment is subject to this monitoring visit. If you have any questions, please email: Wraparound.Childcare@westsussex.gov.uk.
If you have or will have received funding as part of the wraparound childcare (WAC) expansion programme, you must complete the summer term 2025 Management Information (MI) data collection. This data collection comes from the Department for Education (DfE).
It aims to measure the impact and effectiveness of the WAC programme. The MI data collection will take place termly throughout the life of the WAC expansion programme. This is different to the survey we shared with you in the spring term 2025.
The summer term 2025 MI data collection will collect data from all providers who have or will have received funding from local authorities on or before Friday 13 June 2025. If you have received funding confirmation but not yet made changes to your provision, you will be able to communicate this in your data collection response.
The data collection will have no impact on your funding agreements. It is a tool used to monitor the expansion of places and is required by the DfE to report on public spending. Your data will be seen by us as your local authority, Childcare Works will then process your data as part of the overall dataset for England and report back to the DfE.
What do I need to do?
- read the MI guidance for providers
- fill out the MI data collection survey on or before Friday 20 June 2025. It should take no more than 10 minutes. Once you begin the survey, you must finish it all at that time. You won't be able to save your answers and come back to it later
- for question 6, please use the schools list to indicate which school your provision serves. Copy the school name and Unique Reference Number (URN) combination to ensure your provision is linked back to the correct school
The summer term 2025 MI data collection will be monitoring the weeks of 10 February 2025 and 9 June 2025. These are called the reporting weeks. This relates to section 3 of the survey.
Please complete one survey for every provision you have or will have received grant funding for.
Childcare Works have produced a digital toolkit aimed at supporting inclusive wraparound provision across all providers. Used alongside the bitesize recordings, these should be a useful tool for everyone.
As part of our ongoing Wraparound Childcare programme funding, we are pleased to offer all of our out of school providers a one year free membership to the Out of School Alliance. Visit benefits for members of the Out of School Alliance to find out more.
If you are not currently a member and would like to be, please email the Early Years Training team at early.years.training@westsussex.gov.uk to request an access code.
Please include the following information in your email:
- full name
- setting name and host school
- username (can be your email address)
- postal address
Have you seen our new careers in early years and childcare website yet? It has useful resources and information for people who are searching for a career in early years and childcare.
The website encourages people interested in a career in early years and childcare to subscribe to the jobs in early years and childcare newsletter. You can find the guidance and template for submitting job vacancies on our information for childcare providers website. Please continue to submit your job vacancies to us, so we can share them on your behalf.
The Early Years Foundation Stage Safeguarding Reforms, active from September 2025, require settings to monitor children whilst eating, stating; “whilst children are eating there should always be a member of staff in the room with a valid paediatric first aid certificate.”
To support you with this change, we are funding one free paediatric first aid training place for:
- schools with a Reception class
- wraparound care providers who provide food and have Reception children on role
- Ofsted-registered early years nurseries, pre-schools, and childminders.
This certified training is fully compliant with Ofsted requirements and must be renewed every three years. We offer a blended model, with day one completed online and day two, which is face to face at a venue. Please note, once the login code for the online part of the training has been accessed, we are unable to change the name on the booking.
Important information:
- If you are a setting who provides wraparound care on a different site to the school/s you serve, you can access a free place.
- If you provide wraparound care on the site of the school you serve, please contact us to discuss how many places you qualify for.
To book your place, please select one of the dates listed on the West Sussex Services for Education booking portal, and the free space will be automatically applied to your first booking. If you would like to book additional places, they can be purchased at the standard price and this will be automatically applied.
If you have any questions, please email early.years.training@westsussex.gov.uk.
Useful information
Please inform the Family Information Service if your setting needs to close or is re-opening. Email family.info.service@westsussex.gov.uk and include your setting name, Ofsted URN, the date you intend to close/open, and any changes to your operating hours. If you inform us of re-opening, you will be reinstated on the public list and appear on our website www.westsussex.gov.uk/fis.
We would expect you to make contact with your Early Years and Childcare Adviser (EYCA) to talk through your circumstances, where possible, before making the decision to close the setting. If you are not able to make immediate contact with your EYCA then please email your nearest Early Help Hub using the following email addresses:
Where there are not clearly evidenced reasons why the setting had no option to close, there could be implications for funding received as per the government guidance.
We have a range of online training available for you to access for your staff to ensure they have the most up to date information to support them in their role:
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We’re committed to providing excellent support to all providers we engage with. Please take a moment to complete our Early Years and Childcare Provider Feedback Survey and let us know about your experiences. Your feedback will help us improve our service and better support settings like yours. You can visit the web page or scan the QR code. |
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03/2025 (National Wraparound Childcare Programme Grant Funding; Childcare Expansion Capital Grant Funding – applications open for further projects; Leases and Licenses; Careers in early years and childcare website; Out of School Alliance - one year free membership; National Wraparound Childcare Programme - information for maintained schools and academy trusts; Supporting wraparound providers to provide inclusive provision; Training opportunities for wraparound and out of school providers)
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02/2025 (National Wraparound Childcare Programme Grant Funding - deadline extended; Inclusive practice in wraparound provision; Wraparound Childcare Toolkit)
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01/2025 (Childcare Expansion Capital Grant Funding – applications open for further projects; Wraparound Childcare Funding Grant - spring term 2025; Childcare Works provider toolkit launch; West Sussex Early Years and Childcare Conference 2025: Champions of Childhood – Celebrating Early Years Heroes; Early Years Training)
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06/2024 (National Wraparound Childcare Programme; Early years and childcare expansion - Funding timeline of events; e-Bug programme online focus group; Wraparound training)
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05/2024 (Right from the Start: Early Years and Childcare Strategy; Do Something Big Campaign re-launch; Childcare Works HUB; New workforce toolkit; New workforce toolkit; SEND support for wraparound and out of school providers; When do Holiday Activities and Food providers need to register with Ofsted?; Wraparound training)
Early Years and Childcare newsletter web page.
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