The free entitlement offers opportunities to consider providing a full day of childcare rather than managing two sessions a day.
Managing arrivals and departures, achieving lunch as an integral part of the day and the use of premises all require thinking about organisation, use of space, cohorts, key workers and curriculum. This was the case in Shadwell Childcare in Leeds.
Shadwell Childcare was established in 2005 when the village playgroup accessed local authority Daycare Expansion Funding to build a facility in a school extension. A requirement of the funding was that the setting offer extended integrated care as well as the traditional two-and-a-half-hour nursery education sessions. Leeds was a first wave pathfinder and in 2007 Shadwell introduced the 15 hours 'extended flexible offer'. Families can access this as a stand-alone offer in threehour sessions or flexibly over a minimum of three days. The setting is now able to offer an additional three full days or six sessions per week.
Although Shadwell had been delivering extended days since 2005, the increase to 15 hours impacted on the organisation of its day, causing confusion for children and reducing the time available for lunch. After one term of delivering the extended offer, the staff team sat down to think how to improve things.
Children are now divided into two cohorts as the morning session draws to its end: those who are leaving and those who will be staying all day. Similar activities take place with both groups and the location of activities supports the transition period - one group near coats, the exit or in the outdoor area, and the other inside near hand-washing facilities, for example. This small change to the way activities and the room are managed ensures children who are staying for the full day are not disrupted by parents arriving or their friends departing.
Further information
- 'Am I staying for lunch today?', a project consulting three- and four-year-olds about their experiences of the free entitlement commissioned by the DCSF with NCB, is at www.dcsf.gov.uk/everychildmatters/_download/?id=7736
- James Hempsall is director of Hempsall's, www.hempsallconsultancies.com.
