Government funding for 9 month old’s

All settings who provide care all year round (51 weeks or more) are permitted to offer ‘stretched funded hours’ to parents. This means if you are awarded 30 hours extended funding, we can offer up to maximum of 22 hours a week, each week of the year over a number of days, or sessions a child attends nursery. If you receive 15 hours funding, this will become 11 hours across the week, per week for 51 weeks. 

As government funding is solely intended to cover the costs of care only, this does not cover the additional costs such as snacks, meals, nappies, wipes, additional services, or extras that the nursery provides, such as access to our Forest school or educational visits to the setting. The nursery is authorised to charge for these as a voluntary consumable charge. 

Government funding is available to all eligible families with children aged 9 months and up. This can be used on the term following the child reaching 9 months old.

The way Rabbit Patch will offer the funding is below:

Funding can be used between the hours of 8am and 6pm.

We do not require you to take up a certain amount of session in order to access your funding however, we do strongly advise to do a minimum of 2 sessions per week in the best interests of the child. This will help your child to settle with us, as well as helping them to build those secure attachments with the staff members in their rooms.

Consumables will be charged at a rate of £13.00 per 5.5 hour session. These will be charged at a rate of £6.00 for food, £3.50 for non food items and £3.50 for activity charges. All of which can be opted out of, if you choose to do so please speak to a member of the management team in the office.

For example, if a child uses 11hrs a week you will be charged 2 sets of consumables.

Any additional hours, outside of the funded hours will be charged at our hourly rate of £15.00 per hour.

If you are unable to cover the costs of the consumables, we will ask you to provide your child’s meals to cover the day, preferably in line with our settings menus and ideally as close to the menu as possible. Please see our food safety and NO NUTS Policies to ensure no unauthorised foods are being brought into the setting. You will also be asked to provide the consumables your child may use through the day. A list is available from the office upon request.

Parents in receipt of government funding are required to fill out a parent declaration form stating the hours to be covered by the funding and any additional hours they will be using.

click here to find out more information

Please see the link below for West Sussex information on funded childcare

Providing free childcare for 2, 3 and 4 year olds – West Sussex County Council