Become an Early Years and Childcare Advocate!

The Family Information Service for Kensington and Chelsea and for Westminster is a free, confidential and impartial information, advice and signposting service for families with children aged up to 19 (or up to 25 for those with additional needs) and for the professionals working with them. 

Our service provides advice, information and guidance to parents/carers and to young people on:

• Nurseries and Childminders
• Family Hubs and Children's Centres 
• Starting school - including school nursery applications and what to do if you don’t get a place
• Out of school hours clubs
• Parent and toddler groups
• Activities for children, young people and families
• Help with childcare costs
• Benefits, grants and financial support
• Starting a career in childcare

An Early Years and Childcare Advocate is a professional who currently works with or in close proximity to families and has received special training on the new funded entitlements. This training is designed to give you some background information on why accessing an Early Years Education can be so beneficial to children, as well as some of the eligibility requirements in place so that you can guide parents and carers on what funding they may be eligible to receive.

If you work directly with families, or come into contact with them as part of your working practice, we see the role of the Early Years and Childcare Advocate as something to complement your current work. As the expansion of the Early Years Funded Entitlements begins its role out, we imagine that a lot of parents will have questions, such as:

• How accessing an Early Years Education will benefit their child
• How the funded entitlements differ from one another
• What the eligibility requirements are for their child to be able to access these funded entitlements
• What the application process for the different funding streams might entail

By becoming an Early Years and Childcare Advocate, you will not only be perfectly placed to field and answer these questions, you will also be equipped with the most up to date and relevant knowledge that we have available so that parents/carers can get the answers they need to make the best and most informed decision for themselves and their families.

If would like to attend our training and help families access their Early Years Education Entitlements, then please register to attend our training here.

Once we have recieved your contact details, a member of our team will get in touch to send you a calendar invite to our two half-day training sessions in November. These sessions will take place on:

• Wednesday 13th of November from 10am-1pm at Holmfield House Family Hub (4-6 Golborne Road, London W10 5PE)
• Wednesday 20th of November from 10am-1pm at Westminster City Hall (64 Victoria Street, London SW1E 6QP)

We look forward to hearing from you soon!

As an Early Years and Childcare Advocate, you would gain the skills and knowledge to share information on the expanding support towards childcare offered by the government. As well as this CPD opportunity, there will be opportunities to:

• Deliver train the trainer courses within your team or for colleagues in wider departments 

• Help increase the take-up of the funded entitlements amongst eligible families. This can have a positive impact on a child's early development and help get them ready for school 

• Take part in focus group activities to share ideas on how the programme can be further developed 

• Help shape future marketing strategy to share the benefits of the Early Education and Childcare Entitlements

• Help share the voices of local families, hear any barriers that they may be experiencing accessing their child's entitlements and work with the Bi-Borough Early Education and Childcare Service to find ways to overcome these issues

• Help share the positive experiences of families who have successfully accessed their child's funded entitlements

Because we as professionals know just how important education within the Early Years is, specifically in its power to reduce inequality down the line in terms of a child's educational achievement and outcomes, we believe it would be beneficial to have as many children accessing good quality Early Years provisions as possible. 

The expansion of funded childcare entitlements in England has made this possible for parents who may have struggled to pay for childcare in the past, but, unfortunately, we have found that the take-up of this funded childcare falls below our ideal levels at 85%* in Kensington and Chelsea. This means that 15% of eligible families within the borough are either unaware of the funding that is available to them, or of how accessing Early Years Education can benefit their child's development. Clearly, we needed to think about changing our approach and trying to publicise these entitlements to parents and carers further.

After undertaking some research into how we might be able to go about this task, we discovered that Coram Family and Childcare had successfully developed and run a new volunteering programme for local authorities, called Early Years Parent Champions. 

The role of an Early Years Parent Champion is simple: go about your day interacting with other families with young children in your local community, and raise awareness of the funded entitlements should another parent/carer express an interest in Early Years Education or a need for childcare. We believed that this programme could be successful, as people are usually more comfortable going to those they know or perceive as being similar to themselves, and so we have began the task of creating our own Parent Champion Network here in Kensington and Chelsea.

While doing this however, we had another thought: we have so many fantastic and hardworking professionals working for the council whose role requires that they work in close proximity to families that may not know about the new childcare funding entitlements, or be unclear as to the eligibility requirements, that would really benefit from also receiving some training from Coram - and so the idea for Early Years and Childcare Advocates was born!

With your help, we can finally start the conversation with some of the more seldom heard voices in the council about what kind of help they can expect to receive from the government in terms of childcare, which will hopefully not only lead to better outcomes for children, but also parents and carers themselves as they are able to find some time for themselves and perhaps pursue any educational or employment goals they might have.

In short, out vision is to improve the lives and outcomes of those in our community one step at a time by helping them find out what kind of help they might be able to receive, as well as improve our contact and dialogue with families and the community as a whole.

*This number comes from our latest take-up numbers recorded for the 15 hours for 2-years-old's from low-income families funding stream.

The government offers a number of schemes to support parents/ carers towards the cost of childcare. This includes offering funded Early Education and Childcare hours for eligible children from 9 months old.

Full details of the offers can be found on the Childcare Choices website.

Please note: Although the funded offers provide free hours, this doesn't cover the cost of consumables, extra hours or activities. 

If you have any questions or would like to arrange a further discussion about the Early Years and Childcare Advocate role, please contact us by:

• Tel: 07971 625922
• Email: [email protected]