In , the Lanham Act authorized funding for child care facilities for children of mothers working in defense and defense-related industries.
Under this program, subsidies were provided for all children, regardless of family income, to help communities care for children while mothers were assisting with the war effort. The program began as a national school readiness program for 4-year-olds from lowincome families, and while it has evolved and expanded over time, the goals to improve school readiness have remained.
Grants are given directly from the federal government to local Head Start grantees, who offer a range of comprehensive services to support school readiness and strengthen families. In , the Early Head Start program was created to support low-income pregnant women, infants, and toddlers up to age three, ensuring the program could serve a continuum of children ages birth through five.
This program eventually became the Social Services Block Grant. These initiatives were all created to help support parents in the workforce through child care, and continued to promote child care as a form of work support.
While most regulatory aspects were left to states, the CCDBG required states to spend a portion of their funds on quality improvement activities. In , a new law required most welfare recipients, including mothers with young children, to be working or participating in education or training—a significant shift in how eligibility would be calculated.
In , then-President George W. Bush signed the Improving Head Start for School Readiness Act of into law, which included significant changes to the program. Local authorities follow the Department for Education's DfE Early education and childcare statutory guidance to deliver the free Early Years Education for two, three and four year olds.
Children become entitled on 1 January, 1 April and 1 September. Free Early Year Education will stop at a childcare provider when your child starts receiving education at school, even if it is on a part time basis or if the school has phased start dates. More information about Starting School in Hampshire. Early Years Education funding is only available up to statutory school age where you may have applied for a deferred or decelerated place and stops at the end of the funded period of your child's fifth birthday.
A place in a school nursery does not guarantee admission to school and parents must apply for a place at the school if they want their child to transfer to the reception class. This is a total of hours, which can also be taken over more weeks with less hours. The free entitlement starts the funding period after your child becomes age eligible and continues until they start school. For 3 and 4 years olds, this is called the 'universal' entitlement.
Funded providers can register an interest in joining the forum by emailing: elcpartnershipforum gov. We have also developed a step guide for ELC providers to support them with recruitment and training.
When the extent of the COVID pandemic became clear, the Scottish Government took the difficult decision to suspend the statutory duty on local authorities to provide hours of early learning and childcare from this August. The increase to hours will now take place from August but from now until then, all eligible children across Scotland will be able to access at least hours of funded ELC.
Many authorities are already offering hours in advance of this statutory duty, to some or all eligible children. That is why we offer funded ELC to two year olds who are most likely to benefit from early access. This includes all looked after children and children whose family receive a qualifying benefit, which is around a quarter of the two year old population. We are working with local authorities and others to increase awareness and uptake of the two year old offer, and improving information available to parents and carers.
For example, we provide information and advice about ELC options on the Parent Club website and the Children and Young People Improvement Collaborative has been testing approaches to improve the uptake of funded ELC for eligible two year olds. To inform our work in this area, we commissioned research on the drivers and barriers to uptake amongst two year olds.
Prior to , three and four year olds were entitled to hours per year of free pre-school education. The Children and Young People Scotland Act extended provision to hours for all three and four year olds and for two year olds who were looked after including those in kinship care and those whose parents were in receipt of out of work benefits. From August , we extended provision for two year olds further to those whose families meet the eligibility criteria for free school meals.
To ensure that all children experience the highest quality of early learning and childcare ELC the sector is working towards the full introduction of Funding Follows the Child in August Funding follows the child will help increase choice and flexibility for parents and carers whilst ensuring children benefit from high quality provision. The National Standard will be introduced in full from August In the meantime, it is expected that the majority of the National Standard should still be deliverable, although some flexibility will be required on certain aspects.
Further information is provided in the Interim Guidance on Funding Follows the Child and National Standard requirements for settings and local authorities. We have published operating guidance detailing how settings delivering the funded entitlement can meet the National Standard. We have also published a frequently asked questions document for local authorities and funded providers. Supporting technical guidance is also available covering business sustainability, sustainable rates and transition options guidance on contracting.
We developed Funding Follows the Child in partnership with COSLA and local authorities, through a Service Models Working Group, with the final approach informed by a consultation, and a supporting programme of engagement with stakeholders, in To create capacity for the increase in ELC workforce required to deliver the hours expansion, since we have increased training opportunities and routes into all parts of the sector, resulting in a record workforce of over 37, To support this, we have run several bursts of a national recruitment campaign to attract people to a career in ELC, linked to our national childcare careers website , which has a Live Jobs Feed, as well as a range of information about routes into ELC and childminding, and career pathways.
And we have worked with the Scottish Funding Council and Skills Development Scotland to create additional capacity in the college, university and work-based learning sectors to train the additional staff required for the ELC expansion. As well as creating new employment opportunities, the expansion of funded ELC provides an opportunity to increase the diversity of the childcare workforce, including attracting more males and people from diverse ethnic communities into the sector.
0コメント