Dear Colleagues,
Updates from the Team
Funding breakdowns for autumn 2025
The funding breakdowns for Autumn 2025 are now available in your Wizard account. Please log in at your earliest convenience to review the details.
If you have any questions or need support accessing the information, feel free to get in touch. earlyyearsteam@northumberland.gov.uk
Publishing Your Fee Policy – Are You Ready?
Childcare providers must publish their fee policies online by January 2026, including the costs of chargeable extras and the structure of funded hours. These additional charges must be voluntary, optional, and not a requirement to access funded hours. Invoices must be itemized to clearly show free entitlement hours versus any top-up or consumable fees. DfE suggested template attached and further useful information here.
To ensure compliance you will need to provide a link to your settings published fee policy, when answering spring term census questions. This may be your own webpage or your listing within the Family Services Directory. We are experiencing problems at the moment with the site. We will let you know when the system is fixed to enable you to update your records.
Instructions on how to register/update your FSD records here. If you need any support, please contact earlyyearsteam@northumberland.gov.uk
Funding Checks for Spring Term 2026 – Are you ready?
Please validate all new working family codes for next term and review your summaries for children already in provision to ensure they remain valid for Spring as soon as possible.
Supporting Personal, Social and Emotional Development- training now available!
Self-led PSED training is now available on the Learning Library via the School Readiness Passport. See attached flyer.
This session will support practitioners working with children aged birth to 5 to develop their skills in supporting children’s personal, social and emotional skills. The training and supplementary resources will help practitioners when reviewing their current curriculum to make sure they are meeting the requirement of the revised personal, social and emotional development area of learning.
Log in to you Passport account to access now!
Updates from Partners
Rise’s annual Early Years conference is back for its 4th year!
The event will be held on Tue 10th March 2026 at the Grand Hotel Gosforth Park.
Our amazing Keynote speaker is Dr Gemma Goldenberg, Deputy Director of ISEY (Institute for the Science of Early Years), University of East London. Gemma is a child psychologist, education expert and award winning author with over 20 years of experience working with children and educators in schools, nurseries and as part of child development research projects.
Attendees will also have the opportunity to attend three workshops and a market place of services to support their practise.
Topics of the day will include outdoor learning, emotional regulation, communication & language and anti racism in the Early Years.
The event is aimed at professionals working within Early Years such as nursery managers, teachers, nursery practitioners, TAs, family hub staff and others working in similar roles with young children and their families.
Our Early Bird offer means tickets for the whole day are only £40, so to find out more and book your space visit Buy tickets – Rise Early Years Conference 2026 – Health, Wellbeing and Learning in the Early Years – Grand Hotel Gosforth Park
To find out more visit our website https://www.risenortheast.co.uk/work/early-years-conference/
NPCF – Northumberland’s SEND Rainbow Guide Launch
We’re delighted to share this new resource with you, and we hope it will be a valuable tool in your work with children, young people, and their families. Your ongoing collaboration and commitment to improving SEND support in our county is truly appreciated.
You can now access the online version of the Rainbow Guide using the link below:
🔗 NPCF Northumberland Rainbow Guide
🔗 NPCF Rainbow Guide Launch Comms
