Daycare Trust wins contracts to deliver two-year-old early education places

, the national childcare charity, has won seven contracts to deliver support to local authorities as part of the ‘Achieving Two-year-olds’ project.

The project, funded by the Department for Education and led by Mott MacDonald in partnership with Hempsall’s, is a three-year support package to local authorities and early education providers to develop and implement the entitlement to free early education for two-year-olds.

Anand Shukla, chief executive of Daycare Trust said: “The new statutory duty on local authorities to deliver free early education for around 260,000 two year olds across England from 2014 is one of the biggest challenge facing councils. I’m pleased that we’re able to use Daycare Trust’s experience in areas such as business support training and engaging with families to help ensure that the new offer is a success.”

As part of ‘Achieving Two-year-olds’, local authorities will be offered bespoke support to help them ensure there is sufficient capacity to meet the entitlement, improve the quality of provision to best meet the needs of two-year-olds and stimulate parental demand.

Daycare Trust is working with 45 local authorities to deliver a range of services including providing business support training for providers, including how they can integrate the two-year-old offer into their business and implementation planning for local authorities. It will also be supporting local authorities to engage with and identify the families that are eligible for the two-year-old offer.