An independent Parliamentary Inquiry into childcare for disabled children
Evidence from the Pre-school Learning Alliance
Introduction
The Pre-school Learning Alliance welcomes the opportunity to comment on this inquiry in
relation to early years provision for disabled children from birth to age five.
The Alliance is the largest and most representative early years membership organisation
and voluntary sector provider of quality affordable childcare and education in England.
Through its 117 registered early years settings, many of which are housed in, or linked to,
children’s centres, and membership of over 14,000 sessional pre-schools and baby and
toddler groups, the Alliance annually supports over 800,000 children and families in England.
The Alliance also develops and runs training and accreditation programmes, offers
information and advice and campaigns to influence early years policy and practice.
The Alliance’s commitment to the inclusion of disabled children within the sector goes back
over 50 years. This commitment is evidenced through our:

ethos and strategic vision;

guidance, publications and training;

on-line and help line advice to support parents and early years settings;

annual inclusion conference (2003-2011);

membership of campaign and policy groups such as EDCM and CDC;

partnership working with disability rights campaigners and organisations;

involvement in the working groups for the disabled children’s access to childcare (DCATCH) programme and Early Support;

commissioned involvement in SEN Green paper activities 1) Early language
development programme pilot project 2) Co-ordinating the update of the Early
Support training materials.
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Response
The Alliance recognises that despite positive changes in attitudes, legislation and policy, the
rightful inclusion of disabled children into good quality affordable early years childcare
provision is still inconsistent.
The refusal of an early years setting to admit a disabled child into provision or attempt to
pass on the additional cost of caring for a disabled child to parents is unethical and
discrimatory. However, we recognise that there are specific factors which may lead some
early years settings to take these actions. These factors include:

funding support;

legislation and policy;

service cuts and lack of support

training;

over subscription;

two year old entitlement;

access to information and services.
Funding support
Funding cuts to the early years sector over recent years has caused hardship and closure to
some early years settings, limiting childcare options for parents with disabled children. For
parents with children with complex needs the situation is exacerbated because even if they
do find suitable provision the early years setting may have problems accessing additional
funding to ensure that their child is effectively supported.
In April 2013 the funding system changed and funding for all education provision is now
allocated through three blocks and elements, Early Years, Schools and High Needs. The
early years element is allocated to providers through an Early Years Single Funding
Formula.
Early year settings do not receive the schools equivalent of a notional SEN budget and are
expected to meet the needs of most children from within their core budget. However, the
needs of some children are complex and require additional funding to ensure their needs are
suitably met. Although local authorities are expected to make suitable special educational
funding provision to ensure that all children attending early years settings have the same
minimum entitlement to effective provision in reality some do not honour this expectation.
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Provision of extra funding varies considerably between each local authority, with some
providing clear systems for applications, others providing ad-hoc arrangements, some
making no extra provision and refusing to offer support. Since April 2013 and the change to
the funding system the process should have been made easier for early years settings,
however, we have received some reports from settings that local systems for extra funding
are unclear or non-existent.
If, despite utilising all suitable funding support such as the free nursery entitlement and tax
credits, parents still continue to struggle to pay for childcare, they may opt to use direct
payments as a way of paying their childcare fees. For parents that secure Education, Health
and Care plans (EHCPs), the funding issue may be addressed with a properly assessed
personal budget; however, not all parents want to have a personal budget.
Legislation and policy
Recent guidance and draft legislation for the early years sector on SEN and equality has
been confusing and contradictory. This undermines the confidence and knowledge of early
years practitioners and their ability to provide good quality care.
Early years setting have duties arising from the Equality Act to ensure that they do not
discriminate. Recent revision of the Early Years Foundation Stage framework acknowledges
those duties; however, from September 2014 the requirement to have an equality policy will
be removed (although the guidance still refers to a policy within the revision). The removal of
this requirement will be problematic for those settings who choose to remove a policy but
struggle to deliver good practice as they will no longer have a steer to guide their practice.
The advice provided by the draft SEN (D) Code of Practice on the provision of a graduated
approach for non-maintained early years settings is unclear. If this is not resolved in the final
version this will leave settings confused as to the actions they should take.
Service cuts and lack of support
As well as cuts to their own funding, many settings are now feeling the impact of other local
service cuts. These include removal/reduction in numbers of peripatetic staff e.g. specialist
teachers, health visitors, Area SENCOs and sensory teachers, and also services that
settings have historically referred children to such as education/clinical psychology and
speech and language therapy.
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One of the most crucial services to be cut has been the provision of medically trained staff
such as community nurses who have historically taught settings how to safely administer
specific medical interventions e.g. nasal and gastric feeding, rectal medication etc.
Reduction or removal of this service has meant that unsafe practices may be used by
untrained staff.
Training
Lack of good quality training impacts on the confidence of early years staff and their ability to
suitably support disabled children. Since 2009 there has been a huge reduction in training
provision for early years settings which has meant that staff have found it difficult to access
suitable training and continuous professional development.
The Alliance has researched ways of addressing these issues and has produced a package
of affordable (and free) e-learning packages including online webinars. However, this type of
training is not suitable for all types of learning. Some invasive care techniques require face
to face teaching from an experienced and qualified health professional.
Over subscription
Settings should provide consistent provision for local parents. However, the issues outlined
above will impact on the ability of some settings to achieve equitable provision. As a result
they become a less popular choice with parents of disabled children. This, however, may
result in other settings being more popular and becoming oversubscribed which brings about
different issues.
Balanced intake is essential to maintain high quality mainstream provision. If a setting
becomes overstretched then the dynamics of the provision, well-being of the children and
the standard of the care may become compromised.
Two year old free entitlement
Sustainable funding for the numbers of disadvantaged two year olds coming into the sector
continues to be an ongoing concern especially for those settings providing care for children
with complex health, education and social needs.
Early years settings have raised concerns that some local authorities have refused to give
them information about the needs of individual children (on the grounds of confidentiality and
safeguarding) prior to the child starting in the setting. However, this lack of information can
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lead to poorly prepared provision which fails to suitably meet the complex needs of some of
these two years olds.
Access to information and services
The revised Local Offer will hopefully help in the provision of information for parents but only
if local authorities engage with their local early years providers and ensure suitable
information is included within their Local Offer.
The Alliance has received feedback from early years settings reporting that to date their
involvement in the process has been patchy. In some areas local authorities have made no
contact with settings, whilst others have invited early years practitioners onto working
groups.
Family Information Services (FIS) should offer suitable information about local childcare for
parents of disabled children. However, as with other services FIS have had service cuts and
some have been relocated to locations that are harder to access for parents with young
children.
There are some families which are more likely to have difficulty accessing suitable childcare,
these include:

Families with disabled children from some black and minority ethnic communities.
Parents who understand and speak very little or no English are particularly affected
because a vast majority of local translation services have been cut which means
some of these families will struggle to find out what is available locally;

Families in rural areas. These families may experience more challenges with
accessing services because there are fewer childcare options available and securing
transport provision maybe more difficult unless detailed within an EHC plan;

Families with children with complex health/medical needs. These families will fare
poorly because of the decline in expert support, advice and training from medical
staff going into settings.
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Key actions
The Alliance recommends four key actions to help improve access to suitable high quality
early years childcare for parents with disabled children:
1. Government must ensure that relevant law and policy relating to the early years is clear
and is consistent and links together with new and existing legislation and policy e.g.
EYFS 2014, Equality Act 2010 and Children and Family’s Act 2014.
2. Local Offers must clearly show early years provision and associated funding structures
to help make the system transparent and equitable.
3. Local authorities must ensure that there is early years representation on local funding
panels and be given stronger duties to ensure that they suitably fund early years
settings.
4. Local authorities, Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) and NHS Trusts must ensure
early years settings are provided with suitable training on complex health and medical
needs.
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