Improve take-up

Hubs, local authorities, children’s centres and health visitors working together can help promote funded two-year-old places, particularly to those families who may be reluctant to take up their place.

Some of the activities used by the hubs were:

• a birthday party invitation, like this one, used by the BEYA Hub, sent out to children coming up to their second birthday
• outreach and brokerage to identify eligible children and support their parents to choose a suitable early years provider
• leaflets and flyers, often using marketing material from the Mayor’s London Early Years Campaign
• translating promotional material into community languages - check out the 'downloads' section of London Borough of Newham's website for some examples
• information sessions for parents - here's an example flyer, created by the BEYA Hub
• banners on school and community centre fences
• advertising on social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook Instagram and WhatsApp) - check out this great digital pack that you can download and use from the Mayor’s London Early Years Campaign
• advertising on local TV or radio - for example, the Working Together Hub helped develop a video shown on ‘Bangla TV’ aimed at Bengali parents

Hubs encouraged parents to accompany their child to a nursery or children’s centre to build their confidence in taking up their funded place.

Various sessions were offered, including:

• traditional 'stay and play' sessions
• targeted programmes structured around the EYFS primary learning goals
• opportunities for children to play without their parent in sight

The Wandle Early Years Hub ran 'Fantastic Twos' - a six week programme, designed to boost take-up of funded two-year-old places, which parents and children attended together. 80% of children who attended Fantastic Twos in 2019 went on to take up their funded two-year-old place.

To find out more:

• read DDA's case study about Fantastic Twos
• watch the video below to hear Hannah Skaife, from the Wandle Early Years Hub, talk about boosting take-up through Fantastic Twos
• explore other activities for parents and children which were run by the hubs

Working with primary schools

Local primary schools can be an untapped source of new supply of two-year-old early education places. There are a number of factors that may encourage them to create places for younger children, for example:

• some schools were finding that three year olds who had never attended nursery before were arriving at school with developmental delays. Taking these children at two years old provided an opportunity to tackle these issues at an earlier stage
• numbers of children on roll in school nursery classes are falling in some London boroughs as a result of demographic changes in the population. Creating spaces for two-year-olds can generate income for the school and provide greater demand for nursery classes

The Wandle Early Years Hub created a forum for discussion between local primary schools who were already offering two-year-old places, maintained nursery schools with experience with this younger age group, and heads of schools who wished to explore the option.

A headteacher-to-headteacher approach was found to be an important ingredient in achieving success in this area of work, with those heads already providing two-year-old places able to act as champions and offer credible advice to others based on their experience.

"We have really honest and genuine conversations and allow practitioners and Heads to come and observe practice. If we are going to sell it to Heads, you have to be clear about what the benefits are for them as well as challenges."

- Headteacher of a maintained nursery school

Working with childminders

Hubs also worked with childminders to maximise the availability of flexible places and ‘blended’ provision, where the child spends some time in a setting and the rest of the time with the childminder. Creating flexible and blended places is an important way of meeting parental need, particularly for those who are working.

Good data systems are crucial to identifying children who are entitled to funded places and understanding how the supply of places matches demand, including at very localised levels (e.g. wards).

This information can be used to develop a strategy, involving all relevant partners, for stimulating demand and supply as required. It can also be used to identify parents who are reluctant to take up a place for their children, allowing support to be provided to get them to a point of readiness.

The Wandle Early Years Hub developed a collaboration with London Borough of Wandsworth, as a key hub partner. The local authority reviewed the data it held, to produce a data led strategy for identifying where eligible children lived in the borough and where additional places might be needed. This led to the development of an interactive mapping system that could generate detailed local data.

Have a look at a sample borough-wide termly report, created by London Borough of Wandsworth.

The Working Together Hub identified that take-up was peaking and troughing at different times of the year. The hub brought contextual intelligence to the data, such as why parents take up a place and then subsequently drop out. This helped the local authority to improve its understanding of take-up ebbs and flows.