{"id":49533,"date":"2024-03-04T14:56:48","date_gmt":"2024-03-04T14:56:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sheflive.co.uk\/?p=49533"},"modified":"2024-03-04T14:56:48","modified_gmt":"2024-03-04T14:56:48","slug":"funded-childcare-plans-starting-april-approved-by-sheffield-council","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/2024\/03\/04\/funded-childcare-plans-starting-april-approved-by-sheffield-council\/","title":{"rendered":"Funded childcare plans starting April approved by Sheffield Council"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Sheffield City Council has approved government plans to increase extended entitlement, offering funded childcare for children as young as 9-months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Extended entitlement is currently available for qualifying parents of\u00a0 three and four-year-olds but from April this year, two-year-olds will now have 15 hours of funded childcare for 38 weeks per year too. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This will increase to children as young as nine months by September 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Christina Fourie, 48, a Childcare worker from Walkley said: \u201cIt\u2019s a big ask for nurseries to adapt to these changes. Many workers could not cope with switching from four-year-olds to nine-month old babies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The funding comes from the new national extended entitlement of \u00a314.743 million for Sheffield, which will aid over 370 nurseries in rolling out this childcare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Joe Horobin, the Director of Integrated Commissioning, said at a meeting of the city council&#8217;s Education, Children and Families Policy Committee on 26 February: \u201cGood quality childcare is fundamental, providing social and economic benefits to families and to our children.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the Spring Budget 2023, it was announced that widespread change would be part of a 3-step process from April 2024 to September 2025, as shown below.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sheflive.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2024\/03\/unnamed-1.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-49543\" style=\"width:637px;height:auto\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Councillor Dawn Dale said at the same meeting: \u201cWe undervalue early years workers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She also said that childcare workers should be paid more if the Council wants to meet rising demands.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Parents must fit the criteria of earning up to \u00a3100,000 a year and more than at least \u00a3167 per week to be eligible. This is much wider than the previous criteria which makes the scheme more accessible than before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The expected take-up of April\u2019s offer would see over a 100% increase in children aged two years receiving funded childcare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Find other council stories:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sheflive.co.uk\/2024\/03\/01\/67m-major-funding-boost-for-two-new-neighbourhoods-in-sheffield\/\">Major funding boost for two new neighbourhoods in Sheffield<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sheflive.co.uk\/2024\/03\/01\/over-90-of-sheffield-students-allocated-their-first-preference-secondary-school\/\">Over 90% of Sheffield students allocated their first preference secondary school<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sheflive.co.uk\/2024\/03\/01\/it-feels-like-revenge-anger-towards-proposed-council-maintenance-plans\/\">\u201cIt feels like revenge\u201d: Anger towards proposed council maintenance plans<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sheffield City Council has approved government plans to increase extended entitlement, offering funded childcare for children as young as 9-months. Extended entitlement is currently available for qualifying parents of\u00a0 three and four-year-olds but from April this year, two-year-olds will now have 15 hours of funded childcare for 38 weeks per year too. This will increase [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49545,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[152,159,5],"tags":[135,248,116,249,55],"class_list":["post-49533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-council-2","category-education-2","category-news","tag-sheffieldnews","tag-childcare","tag-council","tag-nursery","tag-sheffield-city-council"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}