Early Years

Simplifying early years provision

One Early Years assists local authorities in completing many of the tasks associated with managing pre-school childcare for young families in their area, ensuring quality is maintained and enabling parents and carers to access information on a wide choice of childcare options.

Simple management of early years Provision

One Early Years helps ensure the effective management and administration of Early Years provision within an authority. The system enables authority staff to maintain a comprehensive database of registered and unregistered childcare providers, which includes information on young children, the number of hours they are attending a setting and details of any places available. Data can be keyed-in manually, extracted from spreadsheets supplied by childcare providers or imported direct from Primary Care Trusts and this information can be reused throughout One, reducing administration time. Authority staff can record and manage enquiries to Children’s Services departments through Early Years, on issues such as childcare provision, vacancies, becoming a childcare provider or training. The system enables details of settings to be published on the national Childcarelink website, so that parents can access up-to-date information quickly and easily on providers with vacancies.

Pre-school funding administered with ease

Authority staff will find managing funding is a simple task with Early Years. Estimated and actual payments, calculated by the hour, for two to four-year-olds attending one or more childcare settings are generated at the touch of a button. Payment rules and different rates can be defined for each provider and information on authorised payments can be transferred to the authority’s financial management software for quick and easy processing. The system enables routine checks to be carried out to detect duplicate claims for the same child, where a slightly different name or date of birth has been entered, saving money for authorities and ensuring time spent in administration is minimised. Early Years can be designed to suit the needs of individual authorities and is compliant with the latest DfES guidelines on Early Years funding.

Meeting statutory requirements

Early Years will support greater efficiency across Children’s Services in providing the information required to meet statutory obligations. Data provided by Ofsted on new and existing childcare providers can be imported with ease and the child-level data and other information required for the DfES Early Years Census can be accessed quickly by authority staff.

(click here for more information on Early Years Functionality Sheet)