Introduction
There have been a number of changes to how the early year's sector is supported in Surrey. This document is designed to give the sector the latest information about the teams available to support providers in Surrey.
The Early Years Educational Effectiveness Team, Early Years SEND Team and Early Years Commissioning Team support all registered Early Years providers to develop high quality, inclusive sustainable early education and childcare places which meet local demand. The teams coordinate support to raise quality for all children in existing provision within the private, voluntary and independent sector and in maintained nursery classes and nursery schools.
In addition to the above teams we also have the Funded Early Education Team who support the delivery of the Funded Early Education Funding across Surrey. They support the setting with their initial registration for funding, the administration of the funding and they provide advice and support for existing settings.
Early Years Educational Effectiveness Team
The Early Years Education Effectiveness Team provide support and challenge to a range of early years providers including full daycare, pre-schools, maintained nurseries, childminders and out of school provision to promote quality improvements and maintain high quality provision. The team will provide advice and guidance on quality of provision and the implementation of the Early Years Foundation Stage as well as supporting setting to meet the requirements set out by Ofsted and other relevant legislation.
Early Years Education Effectiveness Advisors act as mentors and role models to settings in Surrey; providing training, advice, support and challenge to early years managers, practitioners and childminders.
The advisory team will liaise with both internal and external professionals to ensure that the Effective Family Resilience Model in Surrey is fully embedded across the early year's sector and will play a key role in ensure young children in Surrey are effectively safeguarded by practitioners. The team will work with settings who have disadvantaged and vulnerable children attending to ensure that they are fully supported to achieve the highest possible outcomes. Early identification and intervention is key to the teams support to the sector. We work closely with the Graduated Response Early Years Team to ensure that settings provided inclusive practice where all children are given the opportunity to flourish. The team provide guidance and support to setting to develop fully inclusive practice with a particular focus on supporting children who are displaying distressed behaviour.
The team work alongside managers and practitioners in early years settings to empower them to become highly reflective practitioners and to continuously evaluate and improve their practice.
The team can be contacted by email earlyyearsadvisors@surreycc.gov.uk
The team consists of:
- Service Manager Educational Effectiveness – Carrie Traill
- Early Years Senior Quality and Education Manager – Philippa Gray
- Senior Early Years Advisor (North West) – Lindsay Ellery
- Senior Early Years Advisor (North East) – Justine Little
- Senior Early Years Advisor (South East) – Frances Smith
- Senior Early Years Advisor (South West) – Tanya Overman
- Early Years Advisor (Woking and Runnymede) – Jane Appleby
- Early Years Advisor (Surrey Heath, West Guildford and Waverley) – Leanne Hunter
- Early Years Advisor (East Guildford) – Toni Bridger
- Early Years Advisor (West Waverley) – Karen Willman
- Early Years Advisor (Tandridge, Reigate and Banstead) – Elke Bailey
- Early Years Advisor (Mole Valley, Epsom and Ewell) – Sue Barrett
- Early Years Advisor (Elmbridge) – Kerry Batchelor
- Early Years Advisor (Spelthorne) - Lara Mathews
- Early Years Advisor for Children who are Looked after - Rachel Clement
Early Years SEND Team
Supporting early identification and intervention through advice and support in implementing a graduated response to meet the needs of children with SEND and promote inclusion through:
- Enhancing SENCO's knowledge and experience through delivery of training and termly network meetings.
- Offering advice and guidance regarding SEND processes.
- Providing advice and support to SENCOs ranging from observation visits, SEND surgeries, telephone and email contact.
- Promoting multi-agency working with health and education to ensure a coordinated approach is in place to support children with SEND.
- Offering advice regarding funding using a graduated response including the Early Intervention Fund.
- Providing up to date advice and online resources through the SEND Local Offer website.
- Supporting transitions including Team around the Family meetings
- Providing advice and guidance regarding Early intervention strategies and support.
The team can be contacted by email for the following areas:
- Elmbridge, Spelthorne, Epsom and Ewell - sectorne@surreycc.gov.uk
- Woking, Runnymede, Surrey Heath - sectornw@surreycc.gov.uk
- Tandridge, Mole Valley, Reigate and Banstead - sectorse@surreycc.gov.uk
- Guildford, Waverley - sectorsw@surreycc.gov.uk
The team consists of:
- Service Manager Educational Effectiveness – Carrie Traill
- Early Years SEND Team Manager – Lisa McMahon
North East
- Senior SEND Advisor – Michelle Blake
- SEND Advisor – Denise Eddy
- SEND Advisor – Jessica Gardiner
- SEND Advisor – Alexandra Dudley
North West
- Senior SEND Advisor – Charlotte Jones
- SEND Advisor – Katie Sage
- SEND Advisor – Sammy Pearce
- SEND Advisor – Ruth Sands
South West
- Senior SEND Advisor – Karen Telling
- SEND Advisor – Nicki Wells
- SEND Advisor – Olivia Turner
- SEND Advisor - Jacquie Brown
South East
- Senior SEND Advisor – Debbie Bullock
- SEND Advisor – Sarah Keaney
- SEND Advisor – Jane Winnan
- SEND Advisor – Linda Innes
Early Years Commissioning Team
The Early Years Commissioning Team work to support the Early Years sector with advice connected to business, funded entitlements, sustainability and sufficiency. The Early Years Commissioning Team has a responsibility to ensure sufficient, good quality provision, achieving excellence and value for money for Surrey residents.
The team provides support to Early Years settings and childminders in setting up and running sustainable Early Years provision. The team can advise in areas such as financial and business advice including forecasting and modelling sustainable provision, setting up a childcare business and how to deliver the funded entitlements. We also work to ascertain need and plan for future sufficiency of Early Years places.
The team works closely with the other Early Years teams, specifically the Early Years Educational Effectiveness Team and the Funded Early Education Team to provide holistic support to settings and ensure they feel well supported in all aspects of Early Years provision.
Please contact the Early Years Commissioning Team by emailing eycommissioningteam@surreycc.gov.uk
The team consists of:
- Assistant Director (AD) for SEND, Education and Early Years Commissioning - Carol Savedra
- Commissioning Service Manager for Early Years SEND and Education – Julie Barker
- Commissioning Manager for Early Years – Olivia Bunn
- Early Years Implementation Programme Lead - Wendy Simpson
- Senior Commissioning Officer – South East Surrey – Charlotte Hards
- Senior Commissioning Officer – South West Surrey – Kim O'Malley
- Senior Commissioning Officer – North East Surrey – Jessica Faulkner
- Senior Commissioning Officer – North West Surrey – Melissa Tome
- Commissioning Officer - South East Surrey – Caroline Pain
- Commissioning Officer - North East Surrey – Shirley Trower
- Commissioning Officer – South West Surrey - Amy Riddlestone
- Commissioning Officer- North West Surrey – Kate Addley
- Commissioning Support Officer - Lucy Bower
- Commissioning Support Officer - Jillian Turner
- Senior Commissioning Officer – Gessica Diprima
- Senior Commissioning Officer, Best Start Lead – Kat Link (from 30 June 2023)
- Early Years Governance Panel Co-ordinator – Rachel Gunton
- Commissioning Officer - Eve Siewierski
- Commissioning Support Officer – Vicky Plowman
Funded Early Education Team (FEET)
The FEET Team make payments for, and support the sector in the claiming of Funded Early Education for 2, 3 and 4 year olds through;
- Registering settings on to the Surrey Directory of Providers
- Registering setting details in Capita One EMS
- Updating Ofsted records on Capita One EMS
- Updating childminder vacancies
- Setting up an account in the FEET Portal for settings to make claims
- Assisting settings with setting up their Provider Agreements
- Assisting settings in making changes to their children's claims
- Helping settings to enter their claims and assisting when something goes wrong
- Establishing eligibility for FEET
- Establishing eligibility for EYPP (PVIs and Schools)
- Establishing eligibility for 30 Hours (PVIs and Schools)
- Reporting back to schools re 30 hours and EYPP eligibility
- Calculating and making payments to approximately 1000 Providers each month
- Making payments in respect of 20,000 children for Universal funding, 6,500 children for extended funding and 1,600 2 year olds
- Raising invoices to reclaim funding where necessary at the end of each funded period
- Making payments of Inclusive practice funding, Disability Access Funds, Sufficiency and Sustainability Grants
- Attending panel meetings for Early Intervention Funding and making the payments
- Collecting information required for Census.
Our contact details are: Address: 1st Floor, Consort House, 5 to 7 Queensway, Redhill RH1 1YB Email: fundedearlyeducation@surreycc.gov.uk
Early Support Service
The Early Support Team works with families holistically to improve outcomes for their children, 0-5 years old with multiple, complex health needs and disabilities. Putting the child at the centre, we listen to parents and establish a team around the family to coproduce a plan of support. This approach builds confident parents and enables children to reach their full potential. Our aim is to make life a little bit easier as simple daily tasks can be very challenging when you have a child with complex needs. There may be a large number of people and services involved and we can help by coordinating these. We work closely with colleagues from health, education, the voluntary sector and social care.
Some of the ways we support our families
- Home visit - depending on the current guidance/risk assessment this could be virtual or socially distanced
- Allocating a key worker who can be one point of contact for the family
- Keeping in touch regularly, not just when there is a problem
- Offer information, advice and practical support about local services
- Organise an Early Support Team Around the Family (TAF) meeting (currently virtual)
- Run and support holiday and term time SEND drop in groups with Family Centres, Education and the Voluntary Sector
Our criteria
We are a targeted level 3 service with each full time equivalent Early Support Key Worker holding a caseload of 12 to 15 families.
- Child with complex health needs, disabilities and/or special educational needs aged: 0 to 5 years (a diagnosis is not required)
- 3 or more specialist health/education professionals involved (or referred to)
- Parent/carer gives consent for Early Support to be involved
- Family in need of regular input to increase resilience and improve child's outcomes due to significant social, financial, health and/or community challenges
To refer a family to Early Support
Do contact us to discuss any possible referrals and let us know if you have made a referral. Complete a C-SPA Request for Support Form stating a referral to Early Support is wanted clearly on the form with as much information as possible about the child's special needs and the family's situation. A less than 3 month old Early Help Assessment is also an acceptable way to refer in. There is a link to the Request for Support Form on the Surrey early Support Service for young children with disabilities webpage.
Email: earlysupport@surreycc.gov.uk
West Team
Lisa Fogerty-Scott – Co-ordinator Lisa.fogertyscott@surreycc.gov.uk
East Team
Dorothy (Dolly) Walker – Co-ordinator Dorothy.walker@surreycc.gov.uk
Education Safeguarding Team
The Education Safeguarding Team provides advice, information and guidance to education settings on their safeguarding arrangements and practice. Our aim is to support education staff with the knowledge and skills to protect every child and young person in Surrey from harm, support them to develop their potential and to create an environment where they feel safe to learn.
Contact the Education Safeguarding Team by email: education.safeguarding@surreycc.gov.uk
The team consists of:
- Education Safeguarding Team Manager: Clare Stewart
- Education Safeguarding Advisor: Emily Smith
- Education Safeguarding Advisor: Sarah Ellis
- Education Safeguarding Advisor: Narinder Ghosal
Schools Family Workforce Development Officer - Andrea Page
Early Years Learning Portal
The Early Years Learning Portal is a one stop shop where Surrey providers can access specific training sessions from a range of Surrey services including Education safeguarding and REMA and provide access to resources, documents and information. The new portal will allow setting owners or the manager to access the training records for the setting, download training materials, provide feedback on course and access to certificates of attendance for staff. Eventually all our Bookstart resources will also be ordered via this system.
If you require any support to access the system please contact Tina Black who is our Early Years Learning and Development Officer tina.black@surreycc.gov.uk.
Early Years Phase Council
A Voice for the Early Years Sector in Surrey – Representing your views.
This Council is comprised of an elected membership of representatives designed to capture the views across the maintained, private, voluntary and independent sectors of Early Years providers. The formation of the Early Years Phase Council (EYPC) mirrors the Primary Secondary and Special Phase Councils and replaces the Early Years Reference Group. This means that for the first time we have achieved equal status with statutory school age education.
The EYPC gives all stakeholders the opportunity, in partnership with our SCC colleagues, to support children and families on their journey of learning. It has a very broad representation from across the sector with members from maintained Nursery Schools, Childminders, PVI providers including pack away sessional settings and full daycare settings. This offers us an opportunity to really understand the perspectives of the whole sector and ensure that we have a voice that represents all children under 5 when Surrey County Council seeks information and opinion in order to inform future planning and policy for future of Early Years.
The EYPC will work as a conduit to support wider consultation on a broad variety of issues and strategies including service delivery, funding and targeted priorities including SEND and social mobility. We will continue to have representation on Schools Forum, which is instrumental in deciding future funding policy. We will also have opportunity to meet with the SCC Director of Education at regular intervals, along with the Chairs of the other Phase Councils, to influence and input into future strategies.
The Early Years Phase Council is keen to support the sector in Surrey and have been looking at ways to do this. We want to hear from you with any concerns, questions, feedback or even positive messages you have! If you would like to contact us directly please send and email to surreyeyphasecouncil@gmail.com. We are also keen to share information with you with updates and other information. If you would like to be added to the EYPC mailing list, then please complete the Early Years Phase Council mailing list.
For further information and details of current member please visit Early Years Phase Council
Useful information
Early Years Networks, Childminder Networks and Early Years SENCO Networks
Each term the Early Years Educational Effectiveness Team and the Graduated Response Early Years SEND Teams run information network sessions. These networks are an opportunity for owner/managers, practitioners, SENCOs and Childminders to come out meet the team and be updated on the latest early years and SEND news. There are sessions held across the county and while we encourage you to attend the one in your area we are happy to see you at any session.
Safeguarding training
Working Together to Safeguarding Children e-learning is suitable for all new staff and for those who have previously attended training but need to refresh their skills and knowledge. The e-learning is available to book via the Surrey Safeguarding Children Partnership (SSCP) e-learning webpage. On the same page you will find a range of other e-learning session that support practitioners to develop their knowledge on a variety of safeguarding issues such as Prevent, Domestic Abuse, Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and online safety. Practitioners who are not the Designated Safeguarding Lead or Deputy Designated Safeguarding Lead should refresh their knowledge and skills every 3 years.
If you are the setting Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL) or Deputy Designated Safeguarding Lead (DDSL) then you will find the relevant training for you on the Surrey Children's Service Academy webpage. You will be required to complete WTSC followed by Foundation Module 1 Multi Agency Safeguarding Children and Foundation Module 2 Child Protection Conference, Plans and Core Groups and finally Early Years Designated Safeguarding Lead – combined new to role and refresher training. The DSL and DDSL should attend a refresher course every 2 years and should update their Knowledge on an annual basis as well as ensuring they are kept aware of changes in regulations and legislation by making and documenting regular checks on the SSCP website, attending training, signing up for the Childcare professionals E-Bulletin and signing up for updates to the SSCP Procedure manual reading updates and recording dates in a log.
Helping families early
In Surrey, our approach to ensuring children, young people and families receive the right early support, at the right time by the right service is changing.
We know that providing early help is more effective in promoting family resilience than reacting later. Effective Early Help means providing support as soon as a problem emerges, at any point in a child's life, from the foundation years through to the teenage years. Early Help can also prevent further problems arising; for example, if it is provided as part of a support plan where a child has returned home to their family from care, or in families where there are emerging parental mental health issues or drug and alcohol issues. (Working Together 2018). Further information can be found on the Family resilience and early help webpage.
Childcare Professionals webpage
There is a range of useful information for childcare professionals on the Surrey County Council Childcare Professional webpage. These pages including information regarding the Early Years Foundation Stage, providing funder early education, running your business, starting your childcare career and training.
Surrey Local Offer
The Surrey Local Offer webpage contains a wealth of information to support families and practitioners supporting children with a Special Education Need or Disability. The Early Years and Playwork practitioner page contains all the information that practitioners need to support children including Graduated Response documents, Individual Support Plans, Funding information and paperwork, making referrals to other agencies and a range of support tools and information.
Children's Services
If you are concerned about the safety of a child or young person you can contact the Surrey Children's Single Point of Access (C-SPA). The Children's Single Point of Access is the umbrella term used to describe the front door to Surrey County Council services for children. Parents, carers and practitioners can phone in to access support, information and advice for families and those who work with children in Surrey.
Your contact will be answered by the Children's Request for Support Team. They may be able to answer your query directly, or when a response is required from a specific team they will send the service request to the appropriate team to respond to you
Requests for support up to Level 3 of Effective Family Resilience will be directed to the Early Help Hub. Families meeting the threshold for Level 4 of Effective Family Resilience will be sent straight to the Quadrant Assessment Teams (Children's Social Care).
Who to contact:
Telephone: 0300 470 9100 or 01483 517898 (out of hours hosted by the emergency duty team) E-mail: cspa@surreycc.gov.uk
For further information on Effective Family Resilience Surrey please visit the SSCP webpage. For more information and to access the request for support form please visit the Surrey County Council contact children's services webpage.
Family Information Service
Surrey Family Information Service (FIS) is a statutory service providing free impartial information and signposting for families with children aged 0 to 19 (up to 25 years for those with additional needs). FIS also manage and maintain the Surrey Local Offer enquiry service and website.
The role of FIS is to help families get the most out of the information and services available in the community and online. This could be something like helping you find out about local events and activities for your child, or pointing you in the right direction when things aren't going so well and you need a bit of extra support.
FIS also support professionals in their work with children and families by providing centralised information resources to help them guide customers to the services and information that they need.
You can use the comprehensive Family Information Directory to find services, support groups, activities, events and more. And if you need some extra help you can always get in touch with us via our How to contact Family Information Service page, by email, phone or social media.
