Supporting the Local Delivery of Flexible Childcare

Tender description

In the 2018 Childcare and Early Years Survey of Parents, parents report that the most helpful changes to local childcare provision to make it better suited to their needs would be affordable childcare (26%) and more childcare available during the school holidays (19%) – with summer holidays reported as the main time of year that improvements could be made. The same survey also found that 15% of parents thought childcare which operated for longer hours would make provision better suited to their needs; with almost a fifth of parents (18%) wanting to use more after school club provision. Lot 1: The government is committed to creating more high quality, affordable and flexible childcare, including before and after school and during the school holidays. Our Holiday Activities and Food programme (HAF) will provide free childcare, structured activities and food for those on free school meals (FSM), during the Easter, Christmas and summer holidays. This contract is for support, advisory and performance monitoring services to assist local authorities with ensuring holiday provision for school-age children across England. This will include (but is not limited to) – 1. Supporting local authorities with the tools and practical guidance on rapidly mapping the current sufficiency of school-age childcare within their region. 2. Providing practical planning and delivery advice to support local authorities in increasing the sufficiency of school-age childcare in their region. This may include identifying potential gaps in provision, supporting the creation of new childcare places, enhancing existing offers and making best use of partnership arrangements with local bodies, schools and other relevant organisations. 3. Regular reporting to DfE against the contract and progress in local authorities. 4. Helping local authorities to create and implement a local communication plan to target parents and hardest to reach communities. 5. Setting up a system of peer-to-peer support amongst local authorities.