Your child will be entitled to funded hours from the funding term after both of the following conditions are satisfied:

• Your child has reached the age of two
• You have a current confirmation of eligibility from HMRC

The eligibility criteria can be viewed on the government's childcare service website.

Applications for working parents of 2-year-olds eligible from 1 April 2024 will be accepted from 2nd January 2024 on the Childcare Choices website.

If the application is approved, parents will be given an 11 digit code by HMRC via the Childcare Service.

You must reconfirm your eligibility every 3 months even if you haven't started claiming.

You should apply for 30 hours childcare and get your code the term before you wish to claim your child’s place. This code must be given to your childcare provider.

You can apply outside of these recommended dates but you might not receive your code in time. If you apply more than three months before the term starts, you’ll have to reconfirm your eligibility in your account in order to keep your code valid.

If you become eligible for funded hours part-way through the term, you can start claiming the additional hours from the funding period after you got your code.

HMRC are responsible for checking whether a parent is eligible and issuing the 11 digit code. This is not done via childcare providers or BCP Council, nor do BCP Council use any discretion to overrule entitlement decisions made via the HMRC Childcare Service (eg late applications).

Contact the HMRC Childcare Service helpline if you need help with:

• applying for an eligibility code
• using your childcare account

Telephone: 0300 123 4097

Textphone: 0300 123 9232

The phone line opening hours are:

Monday to Friday: 8am to 6pm. Closed on Saturdays, Sundays and Bank Holidays.

Foster carers may be eligible for the Expanded Entitlements for children who they foster, where the foster parent(s) are engaged in paid work outside of their fostering responsibilities. Foster parents should contact their social worker to enquire about this.

When a previously looked-after child has been placed with the prospective adoptive parent(s) but the formal adoption order has not yet been granted by the courts, the parent(s) are no longer considered to be the child’s foster parents.

The adoption agency (i.e. the relevant local authority) must notify the prospective adopter(s) in writing of the date on which the child is placed for adoption with them (this is the adoption placement order).

If they wish to apply for the working parent entitlement, these prospective adopter(s) must then apply through the online Childcare Service rather than via the local authority as they can no longer apply via the foster parent route. If they do not hold the child’s birth certificate, they can provide HMRC with the adoption placement order from the adoption agency during the application process.

As with other parents, they must meet the eligibility criteria for the working parent entitlement, including the minimum income requirement and the requirement to reconfirm via the Childcare Service every 3 months. This remains the same when the adoption order is granted by the court.