Children grow and develop far greater between the ages of 0-5 than in any other time in their lives. This period of growth can for some children highlight challenges, whether this is around a child’s rate of development, their behaviour or a specific disability.
It is critical that we identify children’s additional needs at the earliest opportunity. Support and early intervention is fundamental in ensuring children with additional needs/disability are able to make good progress, enjoy learning and ultimately prepare them for adult life.
Inclusion Funding
Gloucestershire County Council provides Inclusion Funding to Early Years settings to help them to safely include and support individual children with emerging Special Education Needs and Disabilities to achieve positive outcomes. The Inclusion funding is a contribution to the resources needed to support the child and is not expected to cover all costs in all cases.
Children aged 2, 3 and 4 years old may be eligible if they receive free Early Years Education (Nursery Education Grant) and have identified needs highlighted in their My Assessment and My Plan or My Plan+. The setting the child attends must have evidenced what support they have received from other professionals, adjustments they have made, why additional resources are required and what outcomes the additional resource aims to achieve.
Disability Access Fund
The Disability Access Fund was introduced in April 2017 to ‘enable Early Year’s Providers to anticipate and make reasonable adjustments to their provision and increase the capacity to support disabled children and children with special educational needs’.
3 and 4 year old children are eligible if they receive free Early Years Education and if they are in receipt of Disability Living allowance. DAF provides the Early Years Setting an additional annual amount of £615 per child for those who are eligible.
This funding is not transferable to other settings e.g. If the child leaves before the end of the financial year this money can’t be moved over to a new setting and if the child attends more than one setting it is up to the parent to decide where this funding should go – it cannot be split between both settings.