Those of us who got the early years quality and access for all grant for

[BoysAreLikeDogs]

things like laptops and for improvements to their gardens -

did you have to fill in a form or application?

are you accredited?

I am having the most trouble you can imagine in getting any info from my early years team and I would love to hear HOW your grants were awarded

Thank you all x x x

PS thread drew my attention to it in the first place

We had to fill in a form that was given to us by our county childminding association and basically that was that.

However, city minders around here have had to fill in a form, under go a gruelling 3 hour inspection by two inspectors from the council (by all accounts was much worse than an Ofsted inspection), then it all has to go to the appeal panel and if the award is granted they have to undergo the same inspection every year thereafter. Glad I'm under county not city for a change!!

And no, I'm not accredited, the only stipulation we were given is that we had to have a satisfactory or above outcome on our last inspection.

thanks henni

yikes at gruelling grilling

Apparently it was really horrid, reduced one fantastic minder to a quivering reck....pulled up about little things such as a little tear on one page in a book!

?????!!!!!..i got mine last year and filled in a very basic form telling them exactly what i wanted (i was told it HAD to be this exact one when coming to purchase it!)..in meantime, computor broke altogether, i bought a laptop, co ordinator say ooh no, you cant claim for that youve already bought it..actual business guy who deals with thm say no problem, submit the reciept, as long as it was bought after april 09 ANYTHING to do with improving busienss is fine!..so i dealt with him instead!

It is now a requirement to be accredited to access the grant here, although it wasn't when I got mine. Its a very small pot of money with far more applicants than can be provided for. So only the most deserving cases get it. The problem is that different authorities have different ideas on what constitutes a deserving case.

I was lucky to be considered a very deserving case because the grant enabled me to make my garden safe - I was not using the garden as it didn't pass my own risk assessment. I was meeting the EYFS requirements by using outdoor facililities in the community but it was a clear visible improvement in the quality of childcare here to approve the grant for this purpose.

I had a detailed application form to provide and I got various requests for more information over the following months. They wanted to know how the planned improvements would impact on the mindees with regard to EYFS and how I would monitor this and how the proposals would ensure equalities issues were considered. Applying was hard work and stressful, it took over 8 months from my first phone call to receiving the funds.

thank you ayla