Does 30 Hours Free Childcare Mean The End Of Nursery Food?
Thirty hours of free childcare must not mean the end of good-quality food – whatever savings you’re considering to make ends meet, it’s vital to protect your menu, says Nigel Denby…
- by Nigel Denby
Few issues are causing more controversy within the early years sector at the moment than the government’s scheme to double free childcare for three- to four-year-olds to 30 hours per week.
Providers are up in arms about the financial implications and, most eye-catchingly from the point of view of this article, more than 40% say their food offer will be negatively affected. Some are considering withdrawing hot food altogether, while alarmingly others are conning families into paying ridiculous additional charges for food in order to claw back their losses. We’ve talked to a number of Grub4life members, and it seems the sector is divided into two camps – those who see the scheme as part of their responsibility to support families and children in gaining all the benefits early education can offer, and those who see it as nothing but a headache that will have a detrimental effect of their bottom line. Without doubt, the scheme poses a financial challenge. The government has set an hourly rate as a grant paid to providers to cover the 30 free hours, but for most, this figure is below the normal hourly rate they charge.
The Pre-school Learning Alliance notes that the existing grant for 15 hours of childcare currently stands at £3.88 per hour compared to the true cost of childcare at £4.53/hour. This 20% shortfall is generally being absorbed as a loss by providers who are offering 15 hours free care. But of course the worry is, can this be sustained when the free hours increase?
Food not included
The grant payment doesn’t include an allocation to cover food costs. However, some local authorities have advised providers to make a nominal charge to parents to cover their food costs.
This is where things start to get messy. Increasingly, Grub4life is hearing accounts of nurseries and childminders deciding that the only way to accommodate children who are entitled to free childcare is to withdraw their normal food offering as part of the ‘deal’. If parents want their child to be fed, additional charges are made (allowed) – or alternatively, parents are advised to send their child to daycare with a packed lunch.
‘It is a challenge, but we have cushioned the hourly rate shortfall by looking at the peaks and troughs in our occupancy; that’s helped to manage the number of free places we offer throughout the week in different locations. “We’ve always believed it’s our moral duty to provide our children with high-quality nutritious food, regardless of how their childcare is funded. It’s an area of the business we’ve invested heavily in over a number of years. That investment is now paying dividends,” she added. “We’ve worked hard to train our staff about how important food is in children’s health and development, so it’s vital we follow that through with all the children we care for.” Grub4life’s view is that it’s fundamentally wrong to refuse hot meals to children in order to make the books balance. If your business can’t absorb the shortfall in funding, that’s an issue, of course; but it may mean you shouldn’t be offering any free places at all, rather than blaming your food costs.
Start planning now
To feed everyone in your care and offer free hours, your food provision needs to run efficiently. You can’t manage setting food budgets like a domestic housekeeping and grocery budget:
• Menus need to be carefully planned and thought through • Recipes need to be accurately calculated and portion controlled • Staff need training to manage food provision • Kitchens need to be equipped to cater for the volume of children you feed • Procurement needs to be efficiently managed
As it stands, the roll out of the 30 hours of free childcare isn’t due until 2017, so there’s still time to address this list, get ready, make plans and work out what you need to do in order to maintain your food offering.
Clearly, it is possible to make the scheme work for everyone: children, parents and providers. A lot of the initiatives to make your setting 30 hours ready may seem like common sense – but as we say at Grub4life, common sense is only common when it’s shared. We’d love to hear how you are preparing!
For help and advice about your early years food and nutrition provision, contact feedback@grub4life.com
Nigel Denby is a registered dietician and founder of Grub4Life; for more information, visit grub4life.org.uk or follow @grub4life
The waters get even muddier, though. Some settings are charging £5 per day, £7 per day or in one case £12 per day to feed a three-year-old! Now, we have never worked with a setting whose budget for food exceeds £2 per child, per day. We can only assume the providers making these excessive food cost charges see them as a loophole to disguise a simple top-up fee (not allowed). If these figures do represent the true cost of these settings’ food provision, perhaps they should have contributed to the government consultation held to determine the level of grant funding. That might have helped food costs to be included. The consultation was held last summer and results were published in October. The analysis of responses shows that only 134 (less than 7%) of the 2,000 responders even mentioned food costs as a concern. It just doesn’t add up, does it?
‘A real missed opportunity’
Elaine Pitteway, executive director of Northamptonshire Childminding Association, saw this problem ahead of time: “As an association we contributed to the government consultation,” she told us. “We hoped more would do the same, and that food costs would be included in the grant. It would have avoided so much confusion.
‘Surely, if food and nutrition is important enough to be included in the EYFS framework, food costs should be included in the grant to providers, but this now looks unlikely. It’s a real missed opportunity.” Ruth Pimentel, chief executive of Toad Hall Nursery Group, told us that her 15 nurseries have managed to accommodate the free childcare allocation without making any additional charges to parents: “There are two issues here,” she said. “First is the shortfall in hourly rate, and second is the lack of funding for food. It’s really important not to mix the two up.
‘It is a challenge, but we have cushioned the hourly rate shortfall by looking at the peaks and troughs in our occupancy; that’s helped to manage the number of free places we offer throughout the week in different locations. “We’ve always believed it’s our moral duty to provide our children with high-quality nutritious food, regardless of how their childcare is funded. It’s an area of the business we’ve invested heavily in over a number of years. That investment is now paying dividends,” she added. “We’ve worked hard to train our staff about how important food is in children’s health and development, so it’s vital we follow that through with all the children we care for.” Grub4life’s view is that it’s fundamentally wrong to refuse hot meals to children in order to make the books balance. If your business can’t absorb the shortfall in funding, that’s an issue, of course; but it may mean you shouldn’t be offering any free places at all, rather than blaming your food costs.
Start planning now
To feed everyone in your care and offer free hours, your food provision needs to run efficiently. You can’t manage setting food budgets like a domestic housekeeping and grocery budget:
• Menus need to be carefully planned and thought through • Recipes need to be accurately calculated and portion controlled • Staff need training to manage food provision • Kitchens need to be equipped to cater for the volume of children you feed • Procurement needs to be efficiently managed
As it stands, the roll out of the 30 hours of free childcare isn’t due until 2017, so there’s still time to address this list, get ready, make plans and work out what you need to do in order to maintain your food offering.
Clearly, it is possible to make the scheme work for everyone: children, parents and providers. A lot of the initiatives to make your setting 30 hours ready may seem like common sense – but as we say at Grub4life, common sense is only common when it’s shared. We’d love to hear how you are preparing!
For help and advice about your early years food and nutrition provision, contact feedback@grub4life.com
Nigel Denby is a registered dietician and founder of Grub4Life; for more information, visit grub4life.org.uk or follow @grub4life
