Education and Skills (Central Ops Team internal)

West Sussex County Council (WSCC) has a duty to ensure public funds are administered and spent in line with any Statutory Guidance or Code of Practice.  

As such, your childcare setting, as a provider of Free Entitlement (FE) funding, has been identified, through a random selection process, for a Funding Audit. 

As part of this audit, we are keen to hear the views of parents on their experience of accessing a funded place.

All responses will remain anonymous and all parents, whom we have contact details for and are accessing FE with this provider, have also been asked to complete this survey. A summary of all the responses will be collated and shared with your childcare provider with any suggestions or action required included.

Depending on your answers, the survey should only take a maximum of 10 minutes of your time.

If you have more than one child accessing Free Entitlement, please complete one survey per child.

This questionnaire is aimed at all parents who have received childcare information from us within the last six weeks and covers the following topics:

• If you have found childcare as a result of the information you have received and what the childcare has allowed you to do.
• If you have not found childcare, what impact has this had.

The outcome from the survey will determine how the Family Information Service can provide further support and guidance to families.

Accessibility statement

If you need this information in another format such as easy read, in large print, on audio or in another language please contact us on 01243 777807 or email family.info.service@westsussex.gov.uk and we will do our best to assist you. If you are deaf or hard of hearing and have an NGT texting app installed on your computer, laptop or smartphone you can contact us on 18001 01243 777807.

We are committed to making this website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018. Please view the West Sussex County Council Accessibility Statement, for further details. Information about the accessibility of Your Voice can be found by clicking on 'Accessibility' which can be found right at the bottom of this page.

We are always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems not listed on this page or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, please contact us at family.info.service@westsussex.gov.uk.

We have been incredibly proud of the work carried out by West Sussex Early Years and Childcare providers over the last year and would like to build on this moving forward into the 2021/22 academic year. 

As part of our ongoing commitment to support providers, and in order to ensure we fulfil our statutory duties, the Early Years and Childcare Team are carrying out a survey to help identify the current strengths and challenges within the sector and areas where we can focus support in order to make the biggest impact. 

Your views are important to us and the responses will be used to shape the training and support, including information, advice and guidance, going forward.

The survey is split into 7 sections:

1. About You and Your Setting 
2. Services and Support
3. Information Advice and Guidance
4. Online Provider Portal (OPP) 
5. Sufficiency/Occupancies
6. Quality and Development
7. Training and Development

You will need to know your Ofsted registration number to complete this survey.

Thank you for taking the time to complete this.

Opening date: Tuesday 13 July 2021

Closing date: 10 September 2021

Privacy Statement

West Sussex County Council (WSCC) is registered as a ‘data controller’ with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO - Reg. No. Z6413427), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues.

We comply with the Data Protection Act 2018 and the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679) (GDPR). This ensures that your personal data is processed fairly and kept securely for no longer than is necessary.

Only staff and third parties who are entitled to see the information included in your responses will have access to it and they may only use it for the purposes stated.

We have strict security measures in place to prevent the alteration, loss or misuse of your information.

We will hold your personal information electronically for 18 months, in line with WSCC retention record keeping guidelines, after which time it will be securely destroyed.

Our full privacy statement can be viewed at https://www.westsussex.gov.uk/privacy-policy

West Sussex County Council (WSCC) has a duty to ensure public funds are administered and spent in line with any Statutory Guidance or Code of Practice.  

As such, your childcare setting, as a provider of Free Entitlement (FE) funding, has been identified, through a random selection process, for a Funding Audit. 

As part of this audit, we are keen to hear the views of parents on their experience of accessing a funded place.

All responses will remain anonymous and all parents, whom we have contact details for and are accessing FE with this provider, have also been asked to complete this survey. A summary of all the responses will be collated and shared with your childcare provider with any suggestions or action required included.

Depending on your answers, the survey should only take a maximum of 10 minutes of your time.

If you have more than one child accessing Free Entitlement, please complete one survey per child.

Under new Department for Education (DfE) guidance, Local Authorities are supporting the resettlement of Afghan families arriving in England who could be eligible to access the Free Entitlement funding for 2,3 and 4 year olds. We are currently working with the Communities Team, within West Sussex County Council, to broker Free Entitlement places for eligible children as well as places for those who require childcare in order to work.

There are a significant number of children under 5 who are looking to take up their Free Entitlement places. This is in addition to some families who require places for younger children/ineligible children in order to support them to work.

We are working to proactively support these families into provision and to broker places in order to:

• manage the expectation of families,
• prioritise children, and
• ensure settings in the area are supported.

We know that there are significant challenges for Early Years and Childcare providers at this time and we would like to hear from you on anything that would be helpful to support you to offer places to these children. We also hope that for those of you reporting lower numbers that this could help support the sustainability of your setting.

We are asking you to complete this short survey to assist us in gauging the availability of childcare places, as well as any potential barriers and support required. We have developed a set of FAQs for providers, available here.

If you are not already signed up to offer Free Entitlement funded places and would like to consider joining the scheme, information can be found here.

Accessibility statement

If you need this information in another format such as easy read, in large print, on audio or in another language please contact us on 01243 777807 or email family.info.service@westsussex.gov.uk and we will do our best to assist you. If you are deaf or hard of hearing and have an NGT texting app installed on your computer, laptop or smartphone you can contact us on 18001 01243 777807.

We are committed to making this website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018. Please view the West Sussex County Council Accessibility Statement, for further details. Information about the accessibility of Your Voice can be found by clicking on 'Accessibility' which can be found right at the bottom of this page.

We are always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems not listed on this page or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, please contact us at family.info.service@westsussex.gov.uk.

As part of our support to children moving from pre-school settings to school, West Sussex have previously distributed the “Starting School Questionnaire”  . As a result of changes in recent years, the results of the Starting School questionnaire are only shared with the Healthy Child Programme for children not attending a West Sussex early years setting. If a child is in a West Sussex setting, the questionnaire response only goes to the setting identified.

To inform our decision as to whether or not to continue with the online questionnaire, we are consulting providers to understand if the questionnaire supports them in meeting the needs of children and enabling them to be ready for school or not. 

This short survey should take you no longer than five minutes.

The Family Information Service has been notified that you intend to stop, or have already stopped, childminding. This information has either come from yourself or Ofsted have informed us. We continually strive to improve the service we offer to our childminders and would be grateful if you could please complete the short questionnaire to help us improve support to childminders in the future.

This survey is for you to feedback your experience of the events and enquiries training on 19/03/2024