ISSUES with recruiting and retaining staff could hamper plans to expand funded childcare provision across Staffordshire, a report has said.
A total of £1.6million has been allocated to Staffordshire County Council to support the plans, which were drawn up by the Government in 2023.
Under the new measures, by September 2025 working parents will have access to 30 hours of funded childcare when their child reaches nine months old until they start school.
The phased approach has so far seen around £570,000 of the money for the county allocated to 21 providers.
But a report to Staffordshire County Council’s Schools Forum meeting this week said there were still potential barriers to completing the final stage of the roll out which would see the remainder of the funding utilised:
“The current national recruitment and retention difficulties for childcare providers are a significant barrier which will impact on providers ability to provide adequate staff for the places created.
“This is likely to be preventing some providers from applying for capital funding to expand and some providers have indicated that they have reduced the number of places that they normally offer.”
The report said work in the coming months would look to analyse areas of the county which are “most in need of additional childcare places”.
It added:
“Accurately assessing the number of places that are required to be created is difficult.
“There is a significant amount of intelligence and data that is collected to allow the Early Years Team to identify areas where additional places are needed.
“Despite this, it is difficult to predict the total number of places that may be required and whether the capital allocation will be sufficient to support this.
“Further work will be undertaken in this area in early 2025.”
The Schools Forum meeting will take place at 2pm tomorrow (23rd January) and be streamed live on the Staffordshire County Council website.