From Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth
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The Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, Roderic O’Gorman, will today (17 August 2022) welcome the first ‘Partner Services’ signing up to Core Funding, as new data revealed a record increase in early learning and childcare providers signalling their intention to expand their services.
Core Funding, introduced in last year’s Budget, will see €221 million invested by the State into early learning and childcare.
Services that sign up for Core Funding will become Partner Services, working in partnership with the State to deliver early learning and childcare for the public good – focused on quality and affordability for children and their families, sustainability and stability for providers and their staff, and accountability, transparency and value for money for the State.
The Partner Service Funding Agreement for Core Funding is available for signing from today.
Preliminary data gathered by the department suggests a strong response from providers to Core Funding:
Core Funding will come into effect and is contingent upon Employment Regulation Orders being in effect, setting minimum rates of pay for all roles across the sector as defined in the Early Years’ Service Joint Labour Committee Establishment Order.
Minister O’Gorman said:
“We are on the cusp of transformative change for the early learning and childcare sector. Delivering high-quality, affordable early learning and childcare is one of my top priorities as Minister. Core Funding is central to this, and will involve a fundamental shift in the relationship between the State and providers.
“My vision is for early learning and childcare to be delivered as a public good to the benefit children, their families and all of society. I am delighted to see Partner Services join together with us to realise this vision.
“I want to see as many providers as possible participating in this partnership to deliver early learning and childcare for the public good, by coming in to contract for Core Funding, and becoming Partner Services. A partnership requires commitment, openness, and good faith on both sides. I intend to uphold the partnership by continuing to increase investment and supporting Partner Services in delivering high quality early learning and childcare. Working together we can achieve great things for the sector and Core Funding will bring many benefits for children, parents, staff and providers.”
Core Funding constitutes a very different approach to funding the early learning and childcare sector. Extensive efforts are being made to assist services with the application process. Services requiring assistance should contact their local City/County Childcare Committee or Pobal via the Early Years Provider Centre (EYPC).
Core Funding is a new strand of funding to early learning and childcare services which will form part of the new funding model as recommended by an Expert Group and approved by Government in December 2021.
Core Funding is a payment to providers designed to meet the combined objectives of:
This is a new and different way of providing funding to the sector and is intended to support the development of a partnership relationship between providers and the State that reflects the public good dimension of ELC and SAC.
€221 million per year is available for Core Funding.
Core Funding will contribute to services’ sustainability and will significantly increase income for the overwhelming majority of services and provide greater funding stability.
Core Funding will be allocated based largely on capacity. Core Funding will give providers a stable income source based on the nature of the service they deliver. A provider’s income will now consist of Core Funding, NCS and ECCE subsidies, and parental fees. Structuring Core Funding primarily based on capacity means that services will have an allocation each year that will not fluctuate in line with children’s attendance.
The vast majority of services will see an increase in funding, and less than 1% of services will see no change. No service will see a decrease in funding. For any service that does experience financial difficulties, a Sustainability Fund will be in place. This new strand of the Sustainability Fund, linked to Core Funding, will be designed to provide an extra safety net for providers. This will be open to both private and community providers.
Core Funding is equivalent to an increase of at least 9.5% in funding for ECCE services not led by a Graduate Lead Educator. At a minimum, for every ECCE child €78.75 per week is now available (compared to €71.90 previously from ECCE standard capitation and PSP combined).
Because Core Funding is paid in respect of places rather than children, effectively this could mean a greater ‘per child’ marginal increase if the service has unfilled capacity. With average ECCE occupancy of 9 children per staff member, Core Funding is equivalent to weekly per child capitation of €80.92.
With Core Funding, the overwhelming majority of ECCE services with Graduate Lead Educators will also benefit and no service will lose out.
The full detail of the conditions are set out in the published Funding Agreement.
Some of the key conditions include:
The Annual Early Years Sector Profile (AEYSP) is the primary data source on the ELC and SAC sector. The AEYSP, which has been running for 20 years, plays a central role in assessing the impact of policy change and informing policy development. It provides a comprehensive national analysis of over 4,500 ELC and SAC services throughout Ireland on key issues, such as capacity and staff.
This year, the Sector Profile is more important than ever. Spring 2022 was a unique point in time for the sector with the end of pandemic measures and imminent introduction of a major new funding stream, Core Funding.
The AEYSP captures essential information to provide a baseline to assess the impact of Core Funding at a sector-wide level. As in previous years, the data collected in the AEYSP provides vital insight to track and monitor trends and identify key issues in the sector.
Given the importance of collecting this data at this point in time, completion of the Sector Profile is a necessary requirement in order to access Core Funding application form.
The information provided in the AEYSP will not be used in assessing eligibility for Core Funding. The purpose of the AEYSP is to create an aggregated picture of the sector as a whole. This is especially important this year, in order to set a baseline against which the impact of Core Funding can be measured in subsequent years.
As a condition of receiving Core Funding, a Partner Service agrees not to increase the fee for any Service Type which was extant on September 30th 2021 or introduce an extra charge for any component of that Service Type.
An increased charge of any kind for an existing and unchanged Service Type will be in breach of Core Funding rules.
This also includes circumstances by which a change of fee policy would result in an increase charges to parents, for example, a service that offered a multiple child deduction cannot remove it.
Anything that had been “folded into” the 30 September 2021 fee cannot now be charged for individually; for example if meals were included in the fee, they cannot now be charged separately. The charges for items and services which were offered for free or at discounted rates on 30 September 2021 cannot be increased beyond these levels.
A Partner Service that has any Service Types that have not changed since 30 September 2021 may reduce a charge for any of those Service Types. They may also increase provision without increasing charges, or introduce a change in fee policies if that change would reduce the charge to parents/guardians, for example: introduction of a multiple child discount.
This will ensure that any developments to the National Childcare will be fully felt by parents in affordability.
Of the €221 million Core Funding budget, the large majority is intended to contribute to improved pay rates across different categories of staff. A significant proportion of the budget therefore cannot be made available without assurances that this funding will be channelled towards achieving this intended objective. In the event that there are no EROs or an ERO covering only one role in the sector in place on 1 September, Core Funding cannot proceed.
The process to develop Employment Regulation Orders (EROs) is an independent process that is set out in the Industrial Relations Act 1946 as amended by the Industrial Relations (Amendment) Act 2012. The Minister of State for Business, Employment and Retail established a Joint Labour Committee (JLC) for Early Years Services in 2021, and the JLC has been meeting since December 2021. The sector is represented on the JLC by employer representatives from Childhood Services Ireland (CSI) and Federation of Early Childhood Providers (FECP), and worker representatives from SIPTU.
The JLC carried out a public consultation on two draft EROs. The first proposed ERO would set a minimum hourly rate of €13 for Early Years Educators and School Age Childcare (SAC) Practitioners. The second proposed ERO would set a number of minimum hourly rates for a range of roles from Lead Educators (Room Leaders) / SAC Coordinators to Centre Managers including where those operating in those roles hold a recognised Level 7 or 8 qualification.
The JLC has adopted draft proposals to cover all roles in the sector as set out in the Establishment Order. Even after adoption of proposed EROs by the JLC, however, the legislation sets out a number of further steps that would need to be completed before proposed EROs could come into force:
Core Funding is contingent on EROs being in place for all roles across the sector as defined in the Early Years’ Service Joint Labour Committee (JLC) Establishment Order. The process to develop EROs is an independent process underpinned by legislation.
The process to finalise the EROs remains ongoing and the Minister has acknowledged the hard work of the members of the JLC to negotiate pay and conditions for employees in the sector. Core Funding will follow once the EROs are in place. However, it is not certain that EROs will be in place by the 1 September 2022. While the department is not a party to the independent ERO process, there is a requirement to align the funding approach with the outcome of that process. As communicated by the Minister and stipulated in the funding agreement pre-condition, without the EROs, Core Funding will not come into effect.
In this event, an Interim Funding scheme will be available and will operate from 1 September 2022 until such time as the EROs comes into effect, or the 30 September 2022, whichever is sooner.
The main objectives of the Interim Funding are to: