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Offaly County Childcare Committee is located at St Joseph's Community Centre in Kilcormac, Co Offaly.
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Dear Service Provider,
We are currently experiencing a high volume of registrations on the Early Years Hive. As a result, you may experience some delays when using the portal.
We’re implementing some changes to the system which should improve the processing times. Please bear with us and thank you for your patience.
Early Years Tem
Dear provider,
The technical issue with the Annual Early Years Service Profile has now been resolved and the survey can be accessed online through your PIP/Hive portal.
If you have any queries or experience any difficulties accessing the survey, please contact the Early Years Provider Centre at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
As mentioned last Friday, the deadline has been extended to 5pm Friday 3rd July.
Thank you for your patience and apologies again for any inconvenience caused.
Kind regards,
Monitoring, Analysis and Outcomes Unit
ear Service Provider,
The Department of Children and Youth Affairs is very conscious of the stress and additional burden the closure period and preparations for re-opening have put on you as providers but also on your staff and the parents and children who use your service. We have endeavoured throughout this period to assist you, initially in sustaining your service through the closure period and, more recently, in making preparations for reopening. You will already be familiar with the extensive guidance and support material available to you through the First 5 Website.
In acknowledgement of the current pressures, and the need to work within public health advice, both the Tusla Early Years Inspectorate and the Department of Education and Skills Inspectorate are providing an update on how they intend to work with services who are opening from June 29th onwards.
In line with the agreement to coordinate and streamline communications to the sector on inspection processes, announced by the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs in January, attached
here are communications from the two inspectorates, which have also been published today on the websites of the two bodies.
In addition to previous guidance issued (available on the DCYA and Tusla websites) and in order to assist providers, both Inspectorates have provided new documentation to explain their approach to inspections in the coming weeks and months. You will find that documentation attached here, including:
If you have any specific queries on the content of the attached documents or the conduct of inspections, please make contact with the relevant inspectorate.
Pobal CAR/the Department of Children and Youth Affairs will provide an update to providers in the coming weeks on resumption of compliance visits.
Kind regards,
Early Years Division.
DCYA.
Dear Service Provider,
Capital Grant Update
As you are aware, Pobal on behalf of the Department of Children and Youth Affairs (DCYA), launched the online application process for the ‘COVID-19 Capital Grant’ on Monday, 22nd June. The ‘COVID-19 Capital Grant’ is a once-off reopening grant of €14.2million for centre-based providers. Applications are managed through the online system known as HIVE and applications will remain open for early years providers to submit an application until Friday, 28th August 2020. Pobal will be making grant payments up to Friday 11th September 2020.
Pobal can confirm the HIVE system for online applications is fully operational. Besides a small downtime on Monday 22nd June to activate the new application process, HIVE metrics show the system is fully available and accessible to early years providers. On Monday and Tuesday, a small number of issues that affected some early years providers were raised with Pobal’s Early Years Provider Centre and these were resolved in an efficient and timely manner.
Within the first 3 days of the application process, Pobal has seen high volumes of successful applications created by early years providers on the system as illustrated in the table below:
Numbers of daily applications received:
| Monday, 22nd June 2020 | 895 |
| Tuesday, 23rd June 2020 | 423 |
| Wednesday, 24th June 2020 | 296 |
Of these, 1,152 applications were approved by close of business Wednesday 24th June. All of these applicants will receive funding by Friday 26th June to a total value of €3.9m. Pobal will continue to receive, approve and pay applications under this scheme on an ongoing basis over the coming weeks.
Early Years Service Providers have a further 9 weeks to submit an application under the COVID-19 Capital Grant. However, the figures above illustrate that already 25% of providers have commenced their applications and have successfully engaged with the system.
Reopening Grant Update
Please note that further to feedback from childcare providers the following provision will not be a precondition for the Enhanced Reopening Support Payment (RSP) - “That there is at least one child registered for a DCYA ELC and SAC programme and attending regularly between 29 June and 23 August.”
Additionally, the following provision will not now be a precondition for the standard Reopening Support Payment (RSP) - “That there is at least one child registered for a DCYA ELC and SAC programme and attending regularly between 29 June and 16 October 2020”
Instead, all providers will be required to notify their local CCC immediately prior to re-opening, confirming their re-opening date. Providers are reminded that they must be open and providing a childcare service within the terms of the funding agreement for respective grants.
Please refer to the FAQ at the following link https://www.gov.ie/en/publication/22329-faqs-version-1-reopening-funding-package-for-childcare-services-12062020/
TWSCS
Please see below some important reminders in relation to TWSCS.
Overpayments
Pobal would like to confirm that we have agreed with the DCYA that any overpayments arising for providers on the TWSCS will not be recouped from the Capital Grant or the Reopening Support Payment.
We are also working closely with the DCYA to agree on the method and manner of recoupment in a way that minimises impact and financial disruption to providers.
Application amendments
There are a number of scenarios covered in the Amending a TWSCS Application Form + Viewing TWSCS Payment Calculation guidance document and steps on how you should correct these issues.
Gross pay figure
In order to calculate your overhead payment we have asked you for the Average Gross Weekly payroll costs for January and February. The figure you have provided must be in line with the Net Weekly Pay information for employees.
As previously instructed, to calculate this figure take the total gross pay value for all childcare staff for January and February and divide by 9.
Submitting all individual service applications for multi-service organisations
Organisations were directed to ‘complete an application form for each service’. Please ensure that all application forms for each service in your organisation have a status of submitted (even if blank) when all updates are complete.
Separating monthly or fortnightly employee payments for payment weeks 1-4
Payments made in April should be divided into individual weekly amounts to reflect amount paid to Revenue.
If an employee was paid fortnightly or monthly on 4th April – 3rd May (payment weeks 1-4 on the application form) then you are asked to treat each PRSI week as an individual payment.
For example:
If you paid an employee €800 on 22nd April that related to 2 PRSI weeks; you should input
Pobal continues to work hard to assist and support all ELC/SAC providers, acknowledging the challenges experienced by the sector due to COVID-19 and the significant efforts the sector is now undertaking to prepare for reopening facilities on 29th June. We would like to take this opportunity to offer our best wishes to all services reopening over coming weeks as well as a big welcome back to the children in your care.
If you have any queries, please contact the Early Years Provider Centre at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or raise a service request on the Early Years Hive.
Many thanks,
Early Years Team
Dear provider,
Unfortunately we are experiencing a technical outage on the Annual Early Years Service Profile survey platform that is out of our control. We are working to resolve this as quickly as possible but the site will be unavailable until the issue is fixed.
We will notify you as soon as the survey is available. In the meantime we have extended the deadline by one week to allow you more time to complete the survey.
The new survey deadline is 5pm Friday 3rd July. More information on this will follow.
We apologise for any inconvenience cause and thank you as always for your participation in this important work.
Kind regards,
Monitoring, Analysis and Outcomes Unit
Offaly County Childcare Committee support the development of quality, affordable, inclusive, accessible childcare and family friendly services for all children in every part of the county.
Offaly County Childcare Committee has been meeting since May 2001 and is made up of representatives from the statutory sector, social partners, community groups, voluntary groups, the Community and Voluntary Forum, National Voluntary Children's Organisations, providers of childcare, and parents - all of whom have a vested interest in childcare provision in the county.
