Clockhouse Preschool Playgroup CIO

Clockhouse Preschool was opened in 1990, as a charity, educating and caring for children aged from 2-5, and acquiring an excellent reputation for family support and for working with children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND)

Providing for children with SEND is an expensive business as many of these children require additional support to enable them to access the learning and to keep them and other children safe. Very limited funding is available from the Early Years Department of the council, but this is not nearly sufficient. 

As the gap between funding and costs has increased over recent years private nurseries and pre-schools have become increasingly reluctant to accept children with SEND. As a local charity setting, we pride ourselves on never having turned a child away on the grounds of their additional needs. We believe that these children, and their parents, have the greatest need and absolutely should not be excluded.

 We currently have a very high ratio of children with SEND, approaching 30% of our group. As an example, one of these children (despite being in receipt of Disability Living Allowance) only has support funding for half the hours that they attend. We also have several children who have severe communication difficulties who need regular one to one intervention from skilled practitioners during their time at preschool, requiring training, planning, resources, and additional staffing.

 As parents receive funding for childcare for 15 or 30 hours, we are not able to charge higher fees, and we wouldn’t wish to do this if we could, as many of our children are from families facing financial difficulties and while we always manage to ensure that we are operating at above the minimum staff ratios we really need to have more support staff to be able to offer the best experience that we can for all our children. To remain viable as an organisation, we need to raise an additional £17000 for the coming year.  

A donation of £55 would fund a one-to-one worker for one session per week, supporting a young person in need. £110 would fund a whole day’s support and £550.00 would fund one week’s support.