Early Years Grant

The earliest years of a child’s life matter.

It’s a crucial time for their learning and development, as they explore and gain skills to enable them to understand the people and world around them.

A quality home learning environment, and the way parents and carers support their children at home, helps to give them the best start in life.

But, financial hardship and rising rates of poverty across the UK, mean that too many families are struggling to provide enough food or basic household items that are needed to support their children’s learning and development.

Parents and carers want to do the best for their children, but we know poverty puts tremendous pressure on families and impacts on the experiences of their children.  An estimated 4.2 million (or nearly 3 in 10) children in the UK now live in poverty. A daily struggle to make ends meet means it’s harder for families to provide the basics that would help their children learn at home, like books and toys. And it doesn’t only impact them materially: poverty also limits parental capacity and time to give children playful and nurturing experiences at home.

Our Early Years Grants programme aims to give every child the best start in life by:

• reducing the impact of material deprivation on families’ lives
• building an understanding of the effective ways that support parents to play and learn with their children at home

Early Years Grants are delivered to eligible families across our UK nations. In local communities, we partner with statutory and community organisations, such as nurseries, schools, health visitors and family support workers to provide families with:

• Supermarket and Argos vouchers that help families to buy household essentials that have added benefit to their children and the home environment.
• carefully created play packs that encourage positive adult-child interactions and playful experiences to support early communication and language development. Click here, for more information on our unique Wonderpacks.
   

Drawing on up to date research-based evidence, knowledge, and practical experiences from children, families, and partner organisations, we aim to:

• learn alongside children, families, and partners about how parents and families can best provide a home environment that supports children's development: social, emotional, speech, language, and communication.
• test and refine practices and approaches that are effective, affordable and can be adapted to meet the needs within different community contexts. 
• listen to children and families’ voices: building credible evidence of how poverty is impacting on their lives, how it makes it difficult to support children’s learning as well as what would