Early Years Service

The Early Years Service aims to give children a sound foundation for learning. We provide good quality combined nursery education and day care. With our partners in the voluntary, community and private sectors, we offer a diverse range of services for all under fives and their families, including children in need and children with special educational needs (SEN). For information relating to the Early Years Foundation Stage team, please see the Early Years Foundation Stage section under the Education link to the left hand side of this page.

Childcare for Islington 2008 (Childcare Sufficiency Assessment) - summary and full report published

The full Childcare for Islington 2008 Report has now been published. The report has been broken up into the contents page (in relation to all eight chapters), the eight chapters and the appendices. Please note, this is a working document and is very long (about 260 pages). The main public document is the summary report published on the website on 31 March 2008.

As stated in Chapter Eight, we are aiming to develop information packs relating to the six Area Children's Network areas, including some of the analysis in the full report that is not in the summary report, targeted mainly at potential and current childcare providers.

If you have any queries please contact:
Childcare Strategy Team, telephone 020 7527 5560/6702, email jane.wright@islington.gov.uk

To download the reports, click on the links at the bottom of this page.

Early Years Service - Useful information for Parents

We have plenty of information to help parents, from our admissions policy to our council-run nursery schools and early years centres. The Children's Information Service, telephone 020 7527 5959, can help you find out about childminders, nurseries, after-school and holiday provision.

We also have information about free nursery education for three and four year-olds, council-run nursery schools and early years centres.

Children's Centres can help parents with education, health and family support services for children up to five years of age and their parents. While Sure Start can offer support to families with children under four years old.

For more information, click on the links under the main navigation list on the left side of this page, and those on the right under Related Information.

Information for Providers

We have information about the Early Years Support Team co-ordination of day care placements for children in need, Early Years Finance Team for grant aid and claiming nursery education grants. We also have information for the support and training of early years training practitioners. 

More on Early Years

To download Young Islington, the newsletter published by Children's Services, click on the link at the very bottom of this page.

Complaints

For complaints about central council services, see the link to Complaints on the right of this page. For complaints about childcare or early education services, whether provided by council, voluntary or private sector, follow the complaints procedure of the provider.

If the complaint is still not resolved, you can contact the Ofsted complaints helpline on 08456 404040.