Childcare Support Fund 

Family Referral Criteria

To be referred to the service, a family must meet one of the following criteria:

• Parents/carers of children who may be (or at risk of) experiencing child poverty, where childcare is needed to enable them to seek work, stay in work or undertake training or education.

• A change in their circumstances or employment – for example, they have recently been served notice on their current childcare arrangement, or they may need to cancel or reduce their current privately paid use of a childminder due to redundancy or a reduction in their hours/income.

• Cost of living increases are requiring them to reduce their childcare, but they are seeking to increase their working hours.

In addition, families must be in at least one of the following priority family groups, identified in the Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan: 

• Lone parent families

• Families with a disabled person

• Families with three or more children

• Minority ethnic families

• Families with a parent aged 25 or under 

• Families with a baby/child under one 

What can the funding be used for? 

• Pay for childcare to enable a parent to attend interviews or training to improve employability.

• Provide transitional support to cover childcare while parents take up employment and until they can afford childcare.

• Reduce cost of living pressures caused by increasing childcare costs while parents secure higher paid employment.

• Maintain parents’ income during school holidays where they might have had to reduce working hours to cover childcare.

• Support with work-related developments which may cause an existing family in a childminding setting to reduce their childcare and risk going into child poverty.

Referral Process

Childminder Referrals
SCMA childminder members can refer a family by following the following steps:

1. Complete and submit our Family Eligibility Form. If the family meets the criteria, a full referral form will be issued to you for completion.

2. Once the referral form has been received, SCMA’s Childminding Placement Officer (CPO) will be in touch to:

• Check that you meet the childminder criteria (see FAQ below).

• Discuss the placement with you in full detail. 

3. If the placement is agreed, you will receive a contract outlining the terms and conditions of the placement.  Placements cannot start until this has been signed and returned to us.

4. Confirmation of the placement will be sent to you in writing via a contract summary. As part of your contract with SCMA you will be agreeing to provide evaluation and monitoring input from yourself as the childminder delivering the placement. The placement will not be confirmed until this is done.

5. Placement check-ins will take place between yourself and an SCMA staff member during the duration of the placement, if appropriate.


Enquiries and Further Information 
For this initial phase of the CSF project, we are prioritising referrals from childminders.

For enquires, please get in touch with the team and email ChildcareSupportFund@childminding.org. 

Enquiries from local authorities or other third sector organisations can be sent to millie.mclachlan@childminding.org.