The £10m pilots will be offered in Blackpool, Derby City, Hertfordshire, Isle of Wight, Kingston upon Thames, North Tyneside, Rotherham, Somerset, Staffordshire and Sunderland.
The partnership scheme, designed to help ease children's transition between early years and primary school, will include a variety of approaches, including holding meetings between parents, childminders and early years and primary school teachers; giving parents a single point of contact for childcare; and appointing advisors who can inform parents of the different childcare options in the area (News, 15 May).
The Government has also published local authority funding allocations for childcare and early years support, announced in the Children's Plan, which amount to a total of £819m funding over the next three years.
The package includes £57m for the Graduate Leader Fund, which aims to ensure that every daycare setting is led by a graduate by 2015 (News, 20/27 December 2007).
It also includes £7m to help nursery staff access training and materials to help them to support children's social development, as part of a new programme called Social and Emotional Aspects of Development (SEAD).
Ms Hughes announced that an extra 30 local authorities, to be named in September, will be given funding to provide ten or 15 hours free childcare provision to disadvantaged two-year-olds, in addition to the 32 local authorities who are already taking part in the pilot scheme.
