Hanwell Bunnies Pre-School Playgroup

On Friday 14th Sarah and I sat down to sift through the growing mound of application forms we have. We applied the normal criteria of first on the waiting list taking priority, with regard to social need, sibling and 3 year olds also.

We contacted the parents we can offer places to by phone and have heard back from most of them now, so we will be full again come February. We have a few spaces to fill as 2 children are leaving to go to Nursery in Jan. We are holding open a place for a referral from Clarissa, outreach worker at EASE.

On Friday last week I got a letter from the Local Network Fund saying we had been awarded a grant of £7000 to extend our Outside Area!!!

This is the maximum amount of grant that can be awarded! The Grant application form was long and arduous and took a lot of my time to complete, so it's very good to know it's been worth it.

The Outdoor Play Company are able to re-commence their work in the 3rd week of January (weather permitting), so cross fingers the Church Property Committee will give the project the go-ahead too.

This morning I had to post off various forms by the 19th Dec, and drop in our original application to Santa at the PLA to write us a reference for the work. Hopefully we will get the funding released in the New Year.

Last week I got a phone call from Julie Lawton at the DCSF in response to an email I sent 2 weeks ago. I wanted answers about when groups like ours will know what is going on financially - what sort of timescales are we looking at for reform of the systems etc.

I explained in some detail the position in Ealing, explained our particular position at Hanwell Bunnies and the difficulties we were having as a direct result of the Nursery Education Grant.

I totally agree with the Government agenda of making education free to 3 and 4 year olds - but making life so difficult for groups such as ours so that we find it hard to continue is hardly a solution - and it hardly benefits the children it's meant to be helping...

Ms Lawton explained that the Education Grant from central Government to the LEAs is not ringfenced at all - to cater for different local needs. The Government are arguing that the LEAs are getting enough to allocate the funds out fairly to all sectors, and are now asking the LEAs to conduct a cost-analysis of Early Years settings to prove how much it costs to run them.

It is all far too political for my liking. I'm not sure whether there is any place in Ealing or the Government's grand plan for committee-run charity pre-schools - I think they want the variety of childcare in the marketplace but are not prepared to listen to our problems or see us as special or in need of extra support. By the time they've realised we were doing quite a good job, we'll all have disappeared... I really don't want that to happen to Hanwell Bunnies - do you?

Dear Charles

I went to the Area Board this morning, thank you for inviting me.

I need the answers to 2 questions so that we can plan for our survival next year.
a) When exactly will the NEG level for 2008-9 be set?
b) I have heard that Sustainability Grants have been scrapped. Is this true, and what other options do we have to make up the NEG shortfall after April 08, assuming that the NEG rise will still not match our costs?

Having the answers to these questions will help us overt a crisis - I don't know if you've ever run a Charity or a small business before, but there is very little room for manouevre and what may seem trivial amounts of money to you spell survival or failure to us. Please bear in mind 70 Hanwell families per year rely on us to manage our Playgroup, currently 5 of those families in need. Ealing, please support us in whatever way you can.

Thanks
Liz at Hanwell Bunnies

For the purposes of your business planning NEG levels are likely to be plus inflation although the amount will be confirmed as soon as the 2008-9 budgets are finalised. Sustainability funding has been ended in favour of more targeted support given based on the sufficiency of childcare audit which is now almost complete. This information will inform funding priorities for 2008 to 09 and will be publicised in the new year.
Kind regards Charles

Last week I met with Clarissa from charity EASE - she is an Outreach Worker and we are working in partnership so that she refers us families who may benefit from a free place for their 2 year old.

Clarissa saw our Playgroup and we have very similar views on the way forward, and how a little intervention at the right time can make a big difference to a family.

I was invited to attend the Area Board Meeting for Central Ealing today - I went along to represent Hanwell Bunnies and it was interesting to see the big picture around Ealing.

Without going into much detail, there was a recurring theme that a lot of good work is going on in Ealing by both council and non-council run bodies. A lot of time money has gone into the setting up of Children's Centres, which serve a very useful purpose in areas of social need - but there is still a massive need for groups such as Hanwell Bunnies to act as satellites to Children's Centres. At the end of the day, this is because parents of young children do not want to travel far to access services... for reasons of environmental sustainability if nothing else, it should be in everyone's interest to keep high quality local groups open.

Had a conversation yesterday with the ex-Chair of St Peter's Playgroup, which closed its doors in September.

A friend of mine mentioned 6 months ago that the Chair was a friend of hers, and then the Chair was referred to me through Ealing Council advisors to see if we could give them any support.

The Chair is now going through the drawn-out task of winding the Charity up, and she reminded me to check that our trustees are fully covered by our insurance for financial liabilities.

Heard from the Grants Clerk from Ealing Council that we can't apply for the funding retrospectively - so we can apply for funding for 2008-9 but not for this term and the Spring Term 2008. This in effect means our bid to support free places for families of 2 year olds is cut from £4115 to just over £2000. Very frustrating. Here's the financial bit...

Just in case anyone is in any doubt about our situation, here's the projected cash flow until July 2008. Thank you so much to Sarah for doing this.

We're in deficit by £2000 by the end of the year, DESPITE raising fees to £10 per session which is against the terms of the SureStart Guidance. This projection makes no allowance for staff sickness, staff training costs, or any other expense on resources that should be part of our budget plan.

We can fundraise til we drop, but we're not going to raise £2000 in 6 months. With fees at £10 a session, we feel that is enough, and to expect parents to cough up here, there and everywhere is underhand and we don't like doing it. We'd rather charge the fee and keep it at that. However, we battled with that decision last year and put up fees hoping that the financial problems would go away... but it's becoming increasingly clear to me that we have a big fight on our hands to survive - again.

Dear Charles

Please find attached a letter of thanks for the grant received from Ealing in the Summer to help develop our Outside Area.

Our Playgroup is still full with a growing Waiting List, and we are working with Copley Close Charity EASE to target families in need to offer free places for under 3s. We are doing everything we can to address the Every Child Matters agenda, including reaching out to those most in need and applying for funding wherever possible to support us financially.

We have built our Reserves back up to legal levels in case of the Playgroup closing - at least we could now pay redundancy pay to our staff and pay off our liabilities (as required by the Charity Commission). But to say we are still struggling is an understatement.

This is not because of financial mismanagement, or mis-appropriation of funds - you are free to study our accounts at any time. It is simply because the actual cost of providing childcare at our setting is approximately £10 per session, and we are receiving £8.50 from Ealing per funded 3 year old.

Recently, our Deputy Manager handed me her NVQ Level 3 certificate - we are doing as asked and getting our staff trained up to Level NVQ 2 and NVQ 3 - but this costs our Playgroup money. Apparently the next expectation will be that the whole workforce has Level 2 and 3 qualifications - who exactly is meant to be paying for this? I agree wholeheartedly as a trained teacher myself that a well-trained workforce equals better outcomes for children, but it HAS to be funded properly.

We are looking at losing a substantial amount of money again this year - possibly as much as £7000. If Ealing cannot award us a Sustainability Grant this year I do not think we will be able to continue. We are awaiting the Cost Analysis information from you so that we can explain the situation we are in in more financial detail. In the meantime, I am waiting to speak to Lucy Smith, Assistant Director at the Early Years Policy Team of the DCSF in the hope that someone somewhere can give us some light at the end of the tunnel.

What makes me most exasperated is that the default position in our area is that middle class (mainly white) families access pre-school education without us making any effort. If we make a little effort, the ethnic mix increases but the social mix stays the same, it tends to be middle class famililes still that will seek us out. By making the kind of effort that Every Child Matters requires, we start getting families involved that really NEED pre-schools. This benefits everyone - the Nursery schools those children go onto, the schools, the whole of society - because problems that arise are tackled early and any Special Needs can be addressed early. We all know from personal experience that this early input makes a big difference - especially to those who most need it.

Hanwell Bunnies exists for the children - not for the parents, or for the Government, or for the Council, or for employers, but for the children. We passionately believe that 2 and 3 year olds benefit from 2 or 3 hours away from their primary carer a few times a week, and we know parents agree with us because our group is so popular. But we do not operate with the financial cushion that schools (or councils) have. We operate in effect as a business that is not allowed to make a surplus, and that makes us very vulnerable financially.

If there is an answer to our situation, I would love to hear what it is. If the answer is that we should stop our self-funded free places for vulnerable families, or charge parents of 2 year olds more to subsidise 'free' 3 year olds then there is something inherantly wrong with the whole system, and it is for this reason that I bring this problem to your attention yet again.

Thank you for listening
Kind regards
Liz Russell

Last week I tried to catch up on some thank you letters for the Grant money we had received from charitable trusts, as well as to St. Joseph's Primary School for letting Hanwell Bunnies have a stall at their school fete - we raised nearly £200 from that.

I also emailed Ealing Council to thank them for the money they gave us to develop the Outside Area, and told Charles Barnard about the effect the NEG was having on our sustainability. Copy of the email in next post.

This week I spent the whole of Monday evening filling in a form to apply for an Ealing Council Small Grant to subsidise our free places for 2 year olds.

Without the free places for families who cannot afford them, we could not fulfil our committment to Equal Opportunities - and we need to constantly look for funding from outside to sustain this so that parents who can pay aren't paying for parents who can't pay.

Sarah the Financial Manager also had to fill in a complex budget sheet, and we had to submit a lot of information. I applied for £2115 for this year and £2000 for next year. I delivered it by hand this afternoon to Perceval House.

Last week I wrote a letter of thanks to William Hobbayne Trust for the £200 they had donated towards our free place scheme for families who could not afford a place otherwise. I also explained that the free place scheme was costing the Playgroup £3000 this year, and that if we could be considered for another grant we would be most grateful.

They are having a meeting on Monday to discuss applications...

In November I spent many hours filling in a form to apply for a Local Network Grant to try to get some money to extend the Outside Area so that it can be used by all children - at the moment it is only big enough for a small group as we only received £3500 last year.

I had to visit Jim Wong at Ealing Community Network in order to have our application checked, and had to contact the Outdoor Play Company to get a new quote.

I had an email back from the clerk saying that we needed to provide named people in our Child Protection Policy (which I thought we'd done), and was warned that unless all staff and committee members had current police checks any funding may be delayed.

We wait to see whether we will get any funding. I applied for the maximum amount - £7000.

All committee members had to fill in DC2s to tell our regulatory body Ofsted that they are on the committee. Receiving a DC2 triggers a police check for committee members too, so that parents can be assured that the committee do not have convictions against children.

While this is all very necessary, it is very frustrating as this process takes up hours and hours of my time and at the end of the day, most committee members stay for a year only. Again, lots of form filling and trips to the post-office.

During the month of November, we have initiated new police checks on all staff except one (who has lost her passport and has a valid police check from St. Mark's Primary School).

This is a lengthy process for me, involving taking photocopies of passports and other documents, form-filling and going to the post-office to make sure the forms actually get there.