Nursery World - Council IT systems can’t cope with stretched hours

Providers are having to manipulate claims for the funded hours because local authorities’ systems won’t allow for the 30- or 15-hour entitlements to be taken as stretched offers.

Kent

Debbie Gunn, owner of D-Dee’s Day Nursery in Faversham, Kent, said she has to lie on the council’s system and say that her setting is closed when it isn’t in order to receive the correct funding.

This is because she only offers the 30 hours as a stretched offer over 48 weeks of the year rather than 38, and is flexible about which weeks parents take up the entitlement.

She said, ‘I only offer the 30 hours stretched. Synergy [the system the council uses] doesn’t allow that. So I have to say I am shut on days I’m not. I only close on weekends and public holidays.

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