Content

Children in UK – all you need to know about childcare in UK

  1. UK Laws Relating to children
  2. What is certified Childcare and how to find one
  3. Early Help and SEND information
  4. Leaving your child with a sponsor
  5. After-school clubs
  6. Schools, admission and 16+

1. UK Laws Relating to children

You might find that some rules and regulations about children are slightly different to those you are used to in your own country.

These differences might be in:

Parental rights and responsibilities. What is parental responsibility?

All mothers and most fathers have legal rights and responsibilities as a parent - known as ‘parental responsibility’. Read more about it.

 2. What is certified Childcare and how to find one

Help paying for Childcare

Paying for childcare – Education and Families

Using after-school clubs, tuition and community activities

There is no single legal framework that governs how clubs and activities for children operate. Although these settings offer provision for children, their staff members and volunteers are not typically inspected, overseen or assessed by any regulatory organisation.

This means that when choosing a club, tutor or coach for your child, it’s important to:

  • ask questions
  • check the policies and insurance they have in place

You should feel able to ask questions about the provider’s activities and policies. A well-run and trustworthy provider will welcome questions. They should be willing to give this kind of information to anyone who leaves a child in their care.

To satisfy yourself that it is a safe environment, you may wish to:

  • meet the providers before your child attends a first session
  • ask providers if you can meet with them during a session

If a provider is going to be working on a one-to-one basis with your child (such as in the case of a private tutor), you may wish to supervise sessions.

3. What is SEND?

SEND stands for Special Educational Needs and Disabilities and covers a range of different disabilities and conditions such as specific learning difficulties like dyslexia and dyspraxia, recognised disabilities such as having a hearing impairment, emotional and social difficulties as well as speech and language difficulties.

Children with SEND may need very little additional support, or they may need significant support and adjustments. Depending on their needs they may only receive SEND support for a short amount of time or may require it throughout their educational journey.

If you are concerned about your child – please contact your Resettlement Officer for support.

What is early help?

Early help is the extra support your family can get if you need it. It may be that you want to prevent a problem or change things for your family before the problem becomes more serious.

It is not a specific service or team, it’s an approach that brings together people from a range of services and teams who will work together with your whole family to help improve the situation for everyone.

It can offer support to families from pre-birth to adolescents with all sorts of issues from parenting, employment and school attendance to emotional wellbeing or anti-social behaviour.

You can read more about it in Ukrainian.

If you have concerns about your child or would like to request Early Help – please contact your Resettlement Officer for support.

Schools, Admissions – for information about schools, school transport and how to register – visit  Education page.

16+ opportunities

You can speak to your current school and teachers to discuss options most suited to your child’s education standard, needs and ambitions, some of which are listed on Education page.

4. Leaving your child with your sponsor while away

If in very exceptional circumstances you can’t travel with your child or children to the UK or need to leave them in the care of the sponsor for 28 days or more to go back to Ukraine, you must take certain steps.