Early learning and childcare providers: delivery support plan

Strengthening Partnership Working

We expect local authorities and funded providers to work together meaningfully and in genuine partnership to deliver flexible ELC provision, while continuing to ensure a high quality experience for children is maintained and accessible to all.

There are already good examples of partnership working between local authorities and funded providers in the private and third sector, including childminders, which we encourage everyone to build upon so that best practice becomes standard practice across Scotland.

Following discussion with the National Day Nurseries Association (NDNA) and Association of Directors of Education in Scotland COSLA's Children and Young People's Board agreed partnership principles regarding the expansion of ELC in September 2018. The principles include transparency, accountability and communication between councils and providers, with all stakeholders being involved in the expansion plans.

It is apparent from our engagement with the sector that there remain challenges and concerns for both providers and authorities, and that some providers do not currently feel as though they are in a genuine partnership.

Partnership working is a key aspect of the 'provider neutral' Funding Follows the Child approach. The National Standard sets out the requirements for all funded providers, regardless of whether they are in the public, private or third sectors, including childminders. Whilst there is, rightly, a high expectation on providers delivering the funded entitlement, settings should also have high expectations of the support that they can expect to receive as part of their agreement with the local authority.

Under this approach there should be a clear and consistent level of support that funded providers across all settings can expect from local authorities. More details on this support can be found in Funding Follows the Child and National Standard for Early Learning and Childcare Providers: Operating Guidance.

How will we strengthen partnership working?

• The Scottish Government wrote to local authority Directors of Education on 7 August 2018 to highlight the key role for local authority leaders to promote meaningful and genuine partnership working and to build trust; to strengthen communication with providers; and to encourage the development of networks for sharing good practice.

• The Scottish Government has worked with COSLA to establish the ELC Partnership Forum, which met for the first time on 23 October 2018. Further details on the Forum are provided in Box 2.

• To build on the work of the ELC Partnership Forum we will work with COSLA to host a Partnership Summit in early summer 2019. This will bring together all local authorities and a range of providers and will focus on showcasing good practice partnership working, and implementing a provider neutral approach. In particular, it will provide an opportunity for engagement for those providers who have not yet had an opportunity to attend a meeting of the Partnership Forum.

• We are creating mechanisms for sharing good partnership working practice. We are increasing our use of the ELC Knowledge Hub, a web-based sharing portal (where all papers and minutes from the Partnership Forum are publicly available), and drawing on good practice from authorities where partnership working is stronger. We are working with COSLA and delivery partners to build on this to promote good practice in partnership working, including the development of case studies.

• Although there is a range of good practice in partnership working across the sector, and this will grow as this practice is shared, we are aware that, in some cases, additional support may be required to strengthen partnership working. We are exploring the potential to offer access to training, where required, to local authority commissioners and to funded providers to enhance and support meaningful and genuine partnership working across the sector. We will set out more details by spring 2019.

Box 2: Early Learning and Childcare Partnership Forum

The Scottish Government and COSLA have worked together to establish the ELC Partnership Forum. The Forum is focused on driving action with its objectives:

• To promote meaningful partnership working across the ELC sector;
• To provide a forum for the sharing of best practice along with exploring new ideas and perspectives, both in meetings of the Forum, and by promoting this across the sector by appropriate means; and
• To identify, and propose solutions to specific issues raised by providers and/or authorities.

Membership of the Forum has been designed to be representative of the ELC sector, and provides an opportunity for as many providers as possible to be involved. Forum meetings will be held in locations across Scotland to maximise its accessibility to providers. Whilst there will be a limit on the number of attendees who can attend each meeting, to ensure that meetings are manageable, it is important that there is open access to the Forum and that providers from all sectors feel included.

Providers who wish to participate in the Forum can sign up to join the Providers Membership Pool. Any provider can sign up to participate in the Forum at ELCPartnershipForum@gov.scot.

The Forum has a 'core membership' of 18 from across local authorities and providers (6 local authority representatives; 4 representative groups (NDNA, CALA, SCMA and Early Years Scotland); and 8 providers from across the ELC sector), which is then supported by COSLA, Scottish Government and Scotland Excel officials. We are also encouraging broader representation form the third sector.

The key messages from each Forum meeting are tabled at the new Joint Delivery Board which is chaired by the Minister for Children and Young People and the COSLA Spokesperson for Children and Young People. The Forum held its first meeting on 23 October, where it focused on Principles and best practice in partnership working, and on the draft National Standard for all providers (in particular the Food and Inclusion criteria).

The second meeting of the Forum was held on 12 December in Aberdeen and focused on workforce issues. The next meetings are scheduled for February and April.

All the agendas, papers and minutes for the Forum are available in the dedicated ELC space within the Knowledge Hub.