How does government funding for wraparound care work?

Since the government announced £289million of ‘start up’ funding over two academic years to ensure all primary school aged children have access to wraparound childcare, the process to make this a reality is well underway. With this in mind, we want to continue advising and supporting you as much as possible.

As the UK’s largest provider of wraparound childcare in the UK, we know a thing or two about establishing and delivering wraparound care in schools. Alongside our Ultimate Guide to Wraparound Care which provides valuable help in setting up a provision, we want to go into a bit more detail about how the funding works.

Why is wraparound childcare so important?

Working families can find managing work alongside school hours challenging, so wraparound childcare is a crucial provision that provides childcare before and after the conventional school day.

The government wants to reduce barriers to employment and hopes that by having access to wraparound care between the hours of 8am – 6pm, parents will have greater availability to work full-time.

However, alongside being able to provide parents with sufficient childcare, the government also highlights the following benefits to schools providing wraparound care:

• Supporting vulnerable children
• Offering enriching activities that children enjoy
• Attracting parents to the school
• Supporting a soft start to the school day and attendance
• Investing fees into the school or community facilities

How does wraparound childcare for primary school aged children work?

Unlike out of school activities or school clubs which take place as a one off activity, once a week or so, wraparound care is available five days a week during term time.

The facility allows working families the ability to drop children off on their way to work and collect them after work, knowing that they are being cared for in a safe, familiar and welcoming environment.

Although the national wraparound childcare programme is designed to be available for all primary school pupils, not all primary schools are expected to offer it directly. Other suitable settings in the local area such as nurseries or community centres can offer wraparound childcare places, but schools are expected to be central in signposting families to the provision.

Another key point is that parents are not expected to collect their children and take them elsewhere to a provision.

Who can deliver wraparound childcare?

Schools can decide how they set up wraparound care. You may wish to run the provision yourselves on the school site, staffing it and managing it using existing team members. You will need to set your own prices and manage a payment system so parents can quickly and easily pay for the breakfast clubs and after school clubs.

An alternative is to outsource wraparound childcare to a private provider (such as ourselves!) who runs the provision either on or off the school site, and manages every aspect of the provision, from booking and staffing to catering and planning activities.

Other models include community or cluster models, childminders or early years settings providers.

Who can access wraparound childcare

Any family with primary school aged children can access wraparound childcare.

What is the funding for?

The funding has been designed to do two things:

• To help local authorities set up their own department to manage the programme, as ultimately, it’s their responsibility to ensure there are enough wraparound childcare places within their area.
• To help schools cover the cost of setting up a new provision OR scaling up an existing provision.

Schools can use the money to fund the overall running costs of the programme, for example, staffing and training, and even transport costs if the provision is held at a separate location, but can’t be used to subsidise sessions.

A separate capacity fund is available should there be any requirement to make changes to facilities or buildings to ensure they are fit for purpose.

The funding has been designed to help mitigate risk in the early stages of new provisions which may take some time to grow. Beyond 2026, it’s anticipated that provisions will be self-sufficient childcare facilities which are funded by parent payments.

Can schools with existing wraparound childcare provisions access programme funding?

Yes, the funding is designed to either help establish a new provision or scale up an existing provision. If data shows that an existing provision isn’t currently meeting the needs of families in the area, then there is an urgent need to create more places – and extend the hours if this is shown to be inadequate.

What’s next?

By now, you will be working with your local authorities to map out the childcare needs in your local area and whether any wraparound childcare provisions already exist.

If you’ve already received your funding allocation it’s likely that you’re in the process of either establishing a new wraparound childcare provision or expanding an existing one.

If you’ve chosen to manage the provision yourselves, our Ultimate Guide to Wraparound Care is a great place to start.

You’ll also need to make your provision as affordable as possible and promote government subsidies such as Tax Free Childcare and Universal Credit.

• Parents on Universal Credit can claim up to 85% of their childcare costs which includes wraparound childcare.
• Working parents can access Tax Free Childcare which offers up to £2,000 a year towards childcare and can also be used towards the cost of wraparound childcare.

But remember, parents can only claim funding for Ofsted-registered provisions.

Setting up wraparound childcare

There are several key areas that schools need to address when establishing a best-practice wraparound childcare facility:

• Administration
• Staffing
• Planning
• Food
• Booking and payment
• Resources

However, there are a number of other vitally important factors to take into account such as ensuring inclusivity, quality assurance and overall management.

If there are too many challenges in setting up an effective wraparound childcare provision, why not leave it to us? We pride ourselves on delivering efficient, fun, varied provisions which take the pressure off you and your staff.

You can even earn up to £10k a year in hall hire fees! Leave wraparound childcare to the experts and make your school childcare offering the best in the area. Get in touch today to find out more.