Early education and childcare

We know that high-quality early education and childcare boosts children’s life chances. That’s why we are so proud to deliver services that support families both before and after the birth of their children.

From family training courses to stay and play sessions, creches to pre-school / nursery provision, we are experienced at supporting the delivery of accessible and affordable services that provide the quality care and education that all children need to reach a good level of development.

Example projects

Early learning support provision (Lincolnshire)

Across Lincolnshire as a commissioned provider of Lincolnshire County Council, we offer a wide range of services for families with children and young people and a short break service for families who have children and young people with disabilities or complex health needs from birth to five years old.

The Early Support Learning Provision (ESLP) service provides families with children who have a disability or complex health condition in their early years up until they transition into full time education (reception year) provides social and learning opportunities for children.

We also offer parents and carers a suitable break from their caring responsibilities at the ‘Time to Play’ sessions. In these free sessions, which are underpinned by the Early Years Foundation Stage, our highly experienced and qualified educators encourage children’s development and independence and support them to prepare for the transition to pre-school and reception in a positive and enabling environment. They also support families to access other services and navigate the local offer with tips and advice.

Crèche provision (West Yorkshire and London)

We deliver high-quality, inclusive crèche provision to support the delivery of parenting programmes across the West Yorkshire area and several London boroughs. We aim to enhance life chances and opportunities for children and families by enabling families to fully engage in parenting programmes and personal development activities while their children are cared for in a safe and stimulating environment.

The service is led by fully-qualified and experienced staff, and offers inclusive, open-ended play resources and child-led play and learning experiences.

Safety and wellbeing is at the heart of our crèche services, with comprehensive health and safety risk assessments, robust booking and registration procedures, enhanced staff-to-child ratios, and paediatric first aid-trained staff.

We also ensure the provision of healthy snacks, adherence to Ofsted national guidelines and compliance with EYFS requirements and standards.

This provision offers peace of mind to families, ensuring their children are well cared for while they participate in programmes designed to support their parenting journey.

CASE STUDY: The Asylum Childcare Project

As part of the Home Office provision of interviews for parents seeking asylum in the UK, the Alliance provided a crèche facility for children under five to enable parents to tell their often-distressing story without their young children in the room.

As part of their Visa application process. The crèche enables children to experience enjoyable play activities and excellent care from a team of experienced staff while their parents are being interviewed in the building. All creche staff have Counter-Terrorism clearance, an enhanced DBS, and bespoke training, including trauma-informed practice.

Ofsted-readiness inspection programme (Oldham)

We provided targeted support to early years providers identified by the Oldham Local Authority Early Years Team to enable each setting to work positively towards the optimum Ofsted inspection outcome for their setting. We also provided post-inspection support visits to enable and encourage pro-active action planning.

We successfully developed productive relationships with providers, as evidenced by verbal feedback. On occasion, settings not on the identified list reached out to ask for support as a result of targeted providers sharing information about programme benefits with other leaders.

Providers on the identified list who have engaged with the support offer and have been inspected by Ofsted experienced successful outcomes, either improving on their previous judgement or maintaining the previous outcome..

Further examples

Coventry City Council – wraparound programme

Working as a partner with the Coventry City Council Business, Sufficiency and Funding Team, the Alliance’s role is to

develop and deliver sessions to give a clear understanding of what wraparound provision is and how providers can access the programme funding

support those wanting to create or extend places for children who are attending reception year to year six with their application; which includes a business case and forecast budget

support providers who have been awarded funding to monitor their spend against the agreed application grant amount

develop and deliver a wide range of business training, network sessions and newsletters to support the development of their wraparound offer to ensure long term sustainability

Nottingham Family Hub Stay and Play service

The Early Years Alliance provide high-quality stay and play sessions in Nottingham City Hyson Green and Meadows Family Hubs.

Highly-trained and motivated early years educators provide high quality inclusive and fun stay and play sessions with a focus on supporting parents and carers to create an enabling home learning environment, supporting child development, early learning, positive health outcomes and positive parenting, including emotional literacy.

Talking Transitions

Talking Transitions brings early years settings, primary schools and family centres together, to focus on children’s communication and language development and their emotional wellbeing through this important time.

Schools and their ‘feeder’ early years settings are brought together to create individual satellites. Focusing on communication and language as a catalyst for change, each satellite collaboratively develops, devises and delivers bespoke mini-transition projects around their children’s speech, language and communication needs.

The project also helps to raise awareness of the importance of communication and language through developing and implementing parental engagement activities and community work.