Funding to Provide Early Years Education for Armed Forces Families 

The Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust, a grant-giving charity supporting projects that help improve the lives of Armed Forces families, has announced that it is offering grants of between £5,000 and £80,000 to support early years education for children from Armed Forces families. The funding is being made available through the Armed Forces Families Fund: Early Years Programme.

Projects can run for up to 2 years.

Applications are invited from: Early childhood education and childcare providers operating where armed forces families live or work and must offer group-based childcare and have at least 50% of service children on roll (unless under a cluster, see below).

• Local authorities who wish to supply specific training to early childhood education and childcare providers supporting service children aged 0-5 years and provide a shared resource working across multiple settings.
• Setting that have less than 50% service children on roll, could still apply as a cluster. This means submitting a group bid on behalf of two or more settings with smaller numbers of service children.

The grants can be used to:

• Increase capacity at the setting to allow more service children to attend
• Provide better learning environments for service children
• Provide appropriate training and development of staff to support service children

The closing date for applications is 12 noon on the 8th October 2025.

For more information click here.