The Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust (the Trust), on behalf of the MOD’s Armed Forces Families Fund, has awarded 11 grants worth £364,787 to nurseries and childcare settings across the UK, under the Early Years programme.
These awards will help forces families access early years education and provide development and upskilling opportunities for early years staff, further improving educational experiences for young children from service families.
Each project will address at least one of the following outcomes:
- Increased capacity at the setting to allow more service children to attend.
- Better learning environments for service children.
- Have provided appropriate training and development to staff to support service children.
- Establishing collaborative networks and shared resources through clusters to address the needs of service children.
- Creating a safer, more engaging outdoor environment
Longhoughton CE Primary School is putting their £38,345 award towards improving their outdoor space, as the current environment is not fit for purpose with limited capacity and several safety hazards. The funding will support the creation of a more suitable and engaging environment for the service children who attend, including the addition of high-quality outdoor equipment. This will encourage active learning and play, while also supporting the development of strong communication and social skills.
Headteacher, Matthew Hetherington, said:
“Providing an inspiring and effective foundation of learning for our service children is central to our mission as a school. The funding provided by the Early Years programme will allow us to transform our Early Years provision, creating an inspirational outdoor learning environment for our Early Years children to experience all year round. The experiential, practical learning opportunities provided will enable children to build strong connections to their local environment and with each other, while promoting rapid development of strong foundational knowledge. Families posted to RAF Boulmer will know that their most local school has the best provision to support the specific learning and emotional needs of military children.”
Strengthening early development with focused training
The Dandelion Day Nursery and Kids Club have been awarded £10,000 to expand provision in response to increased demand, driven by new government funding for working parents.
An excess of applications and a growing waiting list meant that the nursery was unable to provide spaces to meet the demand for full-time childcare within the required timeframe.
By creating additional part-time places, the funding will allow the nursery to ease current pressures on limited capacity, enabling more service children to attend and better supporting the needs of service families newly posted to the area.
Investing in resilience and wellbeing
Many of the military families who attend Penny Pot Nursery experience frequent periods of separation when a parent is deployed, which can be an emotional and challenging time for both the child and the parent remaining at home.
To help support the emotional wellbeing of these children, the nursery plans to create an outdoor environment that can be accessed all year round. This space will offer enhanced learning opportunities designed to reduce anxiety and promote a sense of security.
With the award of £45,000, the nursery will install an all-weather surface and develop a series of dedicated zones to support a variety of learning experiences.
Nursery manager, Tracy, told the Trust:
“We were lucky enough to receive a grant three years ago to refurbish the nursery, and the difference it made to our service children was incredible. This new funding feels just as exciting – it means we can create a safe, inspiring outdoor space where children can learn, explore, and just be children. Military life can bring so much change, but projects like this give us the chance to offer comfort, routine, and joy every single day.”
Strengthening early development with focused training
Other initiatives supported under this round of funding include adapting existing spaces to better accommodate babies currently sharing with older children; providing practitioner training to enhance speech and language development for service children; and delivering bespoke training focused on the importance of attachment in relationships and strategies to support self-regulation in babies.
Find out more
Check out the full list of awards made in this latest round on the Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust website here.
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