This article has been brought to you by Early Years, Coordinator Childcare Development, Clare Thompson, for the attention of Early Years, Childminders, PVI’s, Nurseries, Nursery schools, Primary Schools, practitioners / partners working with families who have children under 5 years old
30 hours free childcare – time is running out for parents to apply for the autumn term
The Department for Education wants to pass on their thanks for your continued work to encourage parents who want to take up a 30 hours place in the autumn term to apply in good time. As you know, HMRC sometimes needs more information from the parent to check whether they’re eligible – therefore please let parents know that time is running out to apply and get their code in good time.
The DfE and HMRC have updated their social media assets with the final message for use during August. This can now be found in the social media assets folder www.childcarechoices.gov.uk/communications-toolkit/ on the Childcare Choices website. The grid below suggests the supporting messages they would encourage you to use with the social media graphic.
Reminding parents to reconfirm their eligibility
The DfE and HMRC would also be grateful if you could continue to remind parents who already have an eligibility code to reconfirm their eligibility for 30 hours every 3 months. As well as 30 hours, they would be grateful if you could remind parents they also need to reconfirm their eligibility for Tax-Free Childcare, if they receive it. Parents receiving both Tax-Free Childcare and 30 hours can reconfirm for both at the same time.
Parents who will no longer be claiming 30 hours in September, but still want to claim Tax-Free Childcare (TFC) do not need to submit a new application. However, they will need to continue to reconfirm their eligibility every 3 months for TFC. To help communicate this, they have updated their social media assets folder with the following social media graphic, and have provided a supporting message that they would encourage you use when sharing this message.
