A meeting with an owner of a small nursery group 15 months ago, raised serious concerns regarding the challenges Early Years settings face. This client advised she had 38 children at one of her nurseries and 19 children had complex additional needs. This was already a major issue to the operation of the nursery and staff were struggling to cope. Each child was on its journey of assessment and although a few had EHC Plans, many didn’t. Before my arrival, only that day she had received a letter from her Local Authority requesting another child with a variety of medical issues attend the nursery.
Although we had suspected there was concern in the Early Years Sector regarding the increased number of SEND children attending nurseries. This individual situation showed me the personal side and the effect on the individuals working within a nursery. This client was in a desperate situation of wanting to do their very best to support SEND children, but both she and her colleagues were completely overwhelmed and exhausted with what they needed to deal with on a day-to-day basis. She stated they just couldn’t do any more at this particular setting.
In this case, we were able to secure some legal support to challenge the Local Authority. A decision was ultimately made to place the child elsewhere. However the experience made me realise there was a need to understand how many other nurseries were facing similar challenges, what was needed by nurseries and was there anything we could do to help.
Following a return to my office, we reviewed the number of enquiries we had received relating to SEND children. There had been a substantial increase. When assessing the queries, the picture we saw was the enquiries were diverse in respect of the type of special needs. It also demonstrated the client’s concerns relating to managing risk, feeling comfortable in handling the medical issues and worries regarding the legal implications, should they get it wrong.
Why is an insurance provider so interested?
As a specialist broker to the sector, we speak to clients daily about their businesses and the risks they are facing. Anecdotally we are seeing an increase in the number of conversations we are having with nurseries regarding risk assessments and making suitable accommodations for children with additional and medical needs. In fact, in the last 12 months, 5% of the complex queries we have spoken to insurers about have been about children with complex medical or additional needs, including feeding tubes, food allergies, epilepsy and oxygen tanks to name a few. For us, it is vital to our business that yours succeeds. We can see that SEND is a growing challenge to the sector and is creating new risks and hurdles for your business and we are passionate about supporting you however, we can.
What we know at the moment
According to the UK Government in UK schools, there are 389,171 children with an EHC Plan and an additional 1,183,384 children with additional needs in school without an EHC Plan. Therefore there must be a similar number of children requiring additional support in Early Years, however, the data is minimal.
What happened next?
We decided to speak with industry experts to seek guidance on how we can support nurseries in respect of risk management, and legal and practitional areas. We had great initial feedback but ultimately, all parties felt it was vital that we didn’t make assumptions but truly understood the extent of the issue and what support the nurseries needed and when. When this information is available, we would be in a position to build a variety of documents to deal with areas such as applications for children to attend, quality risk assessment tools, guidance to how you decide when a nursery can no longer meet the child’s needs and legal insight to manage and adherence to the Equality Act.
What is happening now?
In December 2023, we launched a survey to seek the insight we desperately needed. We would like to thank those that have already submitted responses but we need more to ensure we fully represent nurseries across the UK. If you are a group, we need the nursery manager for each of your settings to complete the survey.
So far, over 700 responses have been received and the results to date are alongside this article.
We were delighted to the response at the NMT Owners Club, following our presentation on this subject we received 50 responses within 24 hours and the support at the event from the various owners was very much appreciated. It did validate that what we were doing was worthwhile.
We believe if the data set is large enough this could be utilised by key organisations to provide vital evidence of the immense pressure the Early Years Sector is under. The University of Bolton has confirmed they will support us with the data analysis. The more insight we get, the better the result for all.
How can you help?
Please help us by completing the survey on this link and circulating it to your management team.
https://uk.surveymonkey.com/r/SENDd2d2023
