Dear Service Provider,
As part of Budget 2022 changes introduced by Minister Roderic O’Gorman, from 2 May 2022 the National Childcare Scheme (NCS) will no longer be deducting hours spent in pre-school or school from NCS awards (wraparound care). This means that parents will be able to use their full awarded subsidised NCS hours regardless of whether their children are in pre-school or school.
This allows families whose parents are not in work or study to avail of more childcare hours for their children outside of pre-school/school hours.
Changes to the Early Years Hive
From this date, there will only be one ‘Claimed Hours’ option for service providers to enter hours when registering a new claim or amending an existing claim, opposed to ‘Claimed Hours’ and ‘Non-Term Hours’. Services can still increase the claimed hours during ECCE or school holiday weeks where more care is requested by the parent. Once submitted, the hours for these weeks will no longer be listed separately as ‘Non-Term Hours’ on the Claim Weeks page of the portal. The hours for each award week will now be displayed in the same ‘Claimed Hours’ column.
Where previously Claimed Hours and Non-Term Hours were visible as separate entries on the Allocations page with different Allocation Sources, there will now only be one single entry for that week with the Allocation Source of ‘Claimed Hours’.
Important NCS claim rules reminder
We would like to take this opportunity to remind services of some important rules related to the registration of NCS claims:· You can only claim for hours the child is attending your service· Hours claimed under NCS cannot exceed the operating hours of the service· NCS hours should not be claimed for the hours that a child is attending ECCE or school
Amending claims and parent confirmation
All NCS applicants with an active NCS award are being notified of this change to the rules via portal notification or by post from 20 April 2022.
These hours will be automatically added to the NCS applicant’s existing awards. However, please note that the hours on active, confirmed claims will not be automatically increased. If an applicant wants to make use of more hours of care, they must agree this with their service provider who must then update the claim accordingly. Claims must be confirmed by the applicant before payments can flow to the provider. Please communicate with applicants to ensure any claims agreed and registered on the Early Years Hive are confirmed by the parent.
Summary
| What is changing? | What is not changing? |
| · The idea of ‘wrap-around care’ is being removed from the NCS · There will no longer be a distinction between term and non-term hours on NCS claims and the Early Years Hive · The maximum hours will be available to claim on the CHICK for all award weeks · Services will only have one ‘Claimed Hours’ option to enter per week. The Non-Term Hours option is being removed. · Where previously Claimed Hours and Non-Term Hours were visible as separate entries on the Allocations page with different Allocation Sources, there will now only be one single entry for that week with the Allocation Source of ‘Claimed Hours’. | · Claims can and should still be amended when providing increased hours of care during ECCE or school holiday weeks · Claims (new or amended) must still be confirmed by the parent before they are active and payments to service providers can flow · You can only claim for hours the child is attending your service · Hours claimed cannot exceed the operating hours of the service · NCS hours should not be claimed for the hours that a child is attending ECCE or school |
Guidance
All NCS child registration guidance available on the Early Years Hive in the Help & Support section will be updated in advance of this change. We will provide further communication with links to this guidance, as well as reminding you of this change, closer to the date.
Support
If you need further support, please raise a Service Request on the Hive using the following dropdown options:·
Request program type: NCS·
Request type: Registrations·
Request type detail: Claim
Regards,
The Early Years Team
