What a Project With Us Looks Like
You have already named the barriers in your Strategic Inclusion Plan. What the plan cannot give you is the time to work on them, or a person alongside your educators while they do. An Innovative Solutions project funds both.
We build the project around the barriers you have named. Professional development sessions deliver the content. Coaching follows on the floor, in your rooms, during operational hours, while your educators put the content into practice. Support tapers across the project, moving from active modelling toward observation and feedback, so your team is working independently before the project finishes.
Wherever possible, the facilitator who delivers your professional development also delivers your coaching. Nothing is lost between the room where the idea was introduced and the room where it has to work.
What One Project Looked Like
This reflection was written in 2022, so some of the program language has changed since. The work and the process are the same.
What a Project With Us Looks Like
You have already named the barriers in your Strategic Inclusion Plan. What the plan cannot give you is the time to work on them, or a person alongside your educators while they do. An Innovative Solutions project funds both.
We build the project around the barriers you have named. Professional development sessions deliver the content. Coaching follows on the floor, in your rooms, during operational hours, while your educators put the content into practice. Support tapers across the project, moving from active modelling toward observation and feedback, so your team is working independently before the project finishes.
Wherever possible, the facilitator who delivers your professional development also delivers your coaching. Nothing is lost between the room where the idea was introduced and the room where it has to work.
What One Project Looked Like
This reflection was written in 2022, so some of the program language has changed since. The work and the process are the same.
The Two Project Types We Deliver
There are five Innovative Solutions project types. We deliver two of them.
Guided Practice
Guided Practice combines content delivery with the practical support to put that content into practice. It is defined by the method rather than the topic, so it can address a wide range of inclusion barriers. It is the project type built for the way we work.
Sessions Built Around the Barriers You Named
We hold a separate library of sessions for Innovative Solutions projects. It sits apart from our public workshop catalogue. Those workshops are fixed programs, the same content and the same activities each time, which is what makes them good value when a service wants that workshop. An Innovative Solutions project asks for something different, so the material is broken down into shorter blocks, resequenced, and rebuilt around the barriers named in your Strategic Inclusion Plan.
That choice is structural. Funding is assessed on whether the project addresses the barriers your service has identified, so a session that would run identically at any service is harder to justify and easier to trim.
How a Project Is Sequenced
Coaching and Mentoring Between the Content
Coaching is delivered on the floor, alongside educators while they are working with children. The facilitator observes the environment, the program and the interactions, then gives practical guidance as educators put the new approach into practice. That ranges from observation and feedback through to modelling a technique and real-time guidance, depending on how confident the educator is at that point. Each visit includes off-the-floor time to reflect on what happened and name what will change.
Mentoring is delivered off the floor, giving educators and your educational leader space to debrief, reflect and plan the next stage. The facilitator documents the takeaways and recommendations from each session, and those accumulate into a record your service keeps after the project ends.
Support tapers on purpose. Early visits involve more active modelling. Later visits move toward observation and feedback, so that by the end your educators are working without the facilitator in the room. The tapering is the mechanism that builds capacity rather than dependence.
Some content, some mentoring, mostly coaching. That is the balance the assessment looks for, and it is also the balance that changes practice. Content on its own tends to fade once the day gets busy.
The Two Project Types We Deliver
There are five Innovative Solutions project types. We deliver two of them.
Guided Practice
Guided Practice combines content delivery with the practical support to put that content into practice. It is defined by the method rather than the topic, so it can address a wide range of inclusion barriers. It is the project type built for the way we work.
Sessions Built Around the Barriers You Named
We hold a separate library of sessions for Innovative Solutions projects. It sits apart from our public workshop catalogue. Those workshops are fixed programs, the same content and the same activities each time, which is what makes them good value when a service wants that workshop. An Innovative Solutions project asks for something different, so the material is broken down into shorter blocks, resequenced, and rebuilt around the barriers named in your Strategic Inclusion Plan.
That choice is structural. Funding is assessed on whether the project addresses the barriers your service has identified, so a session that would run identically at any service is harder to justify and easier to trim.
How a Project Is Sequenced
Coaching and Mentoring Between the Content
Coaching is delivered on the floor, alongside educators while they are working with children. The facilitator observes the environment, the program and the interactions, then gives practical guidance as educators put the new approach into practice. That ranges from observation and feedback through to modelling a technique and real-time guidance, depending on how confident the educator is at that point. Each visit includes off-the-floor time to reflect on what happened and name what will change.
Mentoring is delivered off the floor, giving educators and your educational leader space to debrief, reflect and plan the next stage. The facilitator documents the takeaways and recommendations from each session, and those accumulate into a record your service keeps after the project ends.
Support tapers on purpose. Early visits involve more active modelling. Later visits move toward observation and feedback, so that by the end your educators are working without the facilitator in the room. The tapering is the mechanism that builds capacity rather than dependence.
Some content, some mentoring, mostly coaching. That is the balance the assessment looks for, and it is also the balance that changes practice. Content on its own tends to fade once the day gets busy.
Your Application, With Our Sections Already Written
Most services have never written one of these applications, and the form asks for several things the support provider is meant to supply. We prepare all of them, so your team is not writing them from scratch at eleven at night.
We will also talk through your sustainability answer and your resource rationale with you, because those two are where applications are most often trimmed.
What Is in a Support Provider Statement
Two of the questions on the application form are about us rather than about you, and the form invites you to attach a statement from your provider instead of answering in your own words. We always supply one. This is what it contains.
About the Support Provider
Who we are, what we work on, and the settings we work across. Our practice is grounded in the National Quality Framework and in what quality practice looks like day to day, spanning inclusive practice, children's behaviour and development, educator wellbeing, and quality and compliance.
The Facilitator for Your Project
Named, with their qualifications and their relevant experience. Relevant experience is stated separately from total sector experience, because the funding defines the two differently and an assessor should be able to see the definition has been applied rather than assumed. A closing sentence connects that facilitator's expertise to the barriers your application names.
The Evidence Base for the Content
The theory and research behind what will be delivered, named and attributed. This is the section set out in full under Our evidence base further down this page.
How the Project Builds Inclusion Capacity
How content and coaching work together, how support tapers, and one sentence naming what your service will be able to do at the end of the project that it cannot do now.
The statement is completed for the facilitator on your project and signed by us. You attach it to your IS Case alongside the quote. It is one document, not a form for your team to fill in.
What stays yours. Your barriers, your context and your intended outcomes are yours to describe and yours to sign. Your Inclusion Professional endorses the application, and the Inclusion Development Fund Manager assesses it. We cannot lodge on your behalf, and no provider can tell you an application will be approved.
Your Application, With Our Sections Already Written
Most services have never written one of these applications, and the form asks for several things the support provider is meant to supply. We prepare all of them, so your team is not writing them from scratch at eleven at night.
We will also talk through your sustainability answer and your resource rationale with you, because those two are where applications are most often trimmed.
What Is in a Support Provider Statement
Two of the questions on the application form are about us rather than about you, and the form invites you to attach a statement from your provider instead of answering in your own words. We always supply one. This is what it contains.
About the Support Provider
Who we are, what we work on, and the settings we work across. Our practice is grounded in the National Quality Framework and in what quality practice looks like day to day, spanning inclusive practice, children's behaviour and development, educator wellbeing, and quality and compliance.
The Facilitator for Your Project
Named, with their qualifications and their relevant experience. Relevant experience is stated separately from total sector experience, because the funding defines the two differently and an assessor should be able to see the definition has been applied rather than assumed. A closing sentence connects that facilitator's expertise to the barriers your application names.
The Evidence Base for the Content
The theory and research behind what will be delivered, named and attributed. This is the section set out in full under Our evidence base further down this page.
How the Project Builds Inclusion Capacity
How content and coaching work together, how support tapers, and one sentence naming what your service will be able to do at the end of the project that it cannot do now.
The statement is completed for the facilitator on your project and signed by us. You attach it to your IS Case alongside the quote. It is one document, not a form for your team to fill in.
What stays yours. Your barriers, your context and your intended outcomes are yours to describe and yours to sign. Your Inclusion Professional endorses the application, and the Inclusion Development Fund Manager assesses it. We cannot lodge on your behalf, and no provider can tell you an application will be approved.