Sentinel provides one-stop shop for Early Years Funding in Bromley
September 2019 | News
Sentinel has been selected to provide a comprehensive and secure early years funding system for the London Borough of Bromley.
The pioneering online solution, which includes a parent Portal, will streamline the management of early education funding for around 8,000 children and 400 providers.
“Bromley recognised the wide-ranging benefits our software will deliver for providers, administrators, parents and children,” said Sentinel Partners director, Graham McCusker.
“We’re delighted to have been chosen and look forward to getting a fully-tailored system up and running.”
Originally developed to transform the funding process for local authority teams and childcare providers across the UK, Sentinel’s automated solution now offers a ‘one-stop shop’ parent portal.
The idea of the Portal is to create an easy-to-use system for parents and providers.
Parents can already get information about local childcare providers and early years funding from Bromley’s website. But now they can use the new parent Portal to check their children’s eligibility for early education funding and apply to the provider for places.
Parents are still expected to visit settings to discuss their childcare requirements, but the Portal will help make their child’s early years journey smoother. Providers will have everything they need to help manage their funding in one, easy-to-use, online system.
The Portal removes the need for parents to make separate eligibility checks according to the different schemes for two-year-old children and those who are aged three or four.
Parents will then be able to visit childcare providers knowing how many funded hours their child could attend. The new early years funding system will give childcare providers accurate, up-to-date information on each child and their eligibility.
The accuracy of the data held by the system also allows reports to be generated quickly and easily, including all Sufficiency Data and the collection, validation and submission of Early Years Census to DfE.
