Guidelines for Targeted Funding

Services must use Targeted Funding in line with the requirements specified in the Targeted Funding guidelines.

The Ministry has identified four areas for spending:

• Working with whānau | families - To extend relationships with families and whānau to support learning and development in the home
• Removing barriers to learning - To remove barriers to participation in early learning and meet the basic needs of tamariki | children so they are well positioned to develop and learn
• Enriching learning environments - To provide rich learning opportunities that support the development of tamariki | children, specifically their oral language and literacy development
• Tailored teaching approaches - To support teachers, kaiako and parents to understand and respond to the learning and development needs of tamariki | children.

Planning

The Targeted Funding guidelines provide exemplars for how early learning services can use Targeted Funding.

They also provide a quality improvement cycle, self-review template and planning questions. These are intended to help early learning services plan for and review their use of Targeted Funding.

Services must spend Targeted Funding in the funding period it was allocated.

Restrictions on spending Targeted Funding

Targeted Funding cannot be used for general operating expenses or profit.

This includes:

• General property maintenance (for example: painting, heating systems, roofing and gardening).
• Rental costs.
• Paying off debt.
• General education resources (for example: playground equipment and furniture).
• Investment in a separate account or entity and to accumulate interest or generate profit.
• General operating costs (for example: police vetting, teacher certification costs and electricity or water bills).
• Professional development for courses/seminars that are not aimed at improving the outcomes for priority learners.
• Marketing and promotional activities/resources.

Pooling of Targeted Funding

Early learning services can combine their Targeted Funding with other services receiving Targeted Funding.

Service providers, umbrella organisations and Kāhui Ako can only pool Targeted Funding if each individual service agrees and provides written consent that details how much of their Targeted Funding entitlement they wish to pool.

Targeted Funding must be spent on those early learning services that generated the Targeted Funding entitlement.