Mumsnet Talk

Working families will receive £1200 a year per child up to a maximum of 20% of their total childcare costs from 2015. Both parents or a single parent must be working and earning less than £150,000 a year to qualify.

Is this a welcome boost to help parents who can't afford childcare or does it insult parents who choose to stay at home and look after their children themselves? Should they be encouraging parents to work or stay at home or should they not help parents at all as it is their decision to have children?

I don't think it's that different to now. You can get tax break of £220 per adult per month towards childcare vouchers.
Childcare is so costly these days, and one of the reasons many parents don't work, I think any help is good, especially when you consider how many working parents aren't entitled to the 15 hours free childcare earlier you get of your on certain benifits.

Don't understand.

Why is it insulting to families with a SAHP if they get the money as well?

I can see that it means a single parent who is not working cannot claim but presumably the 15 hours will stay which will help while looking?

Think i need this explained a bit more, why is it insulting?

I don't think it insults sahp's. Don't forget it is only this generation of parents who have had any childcare subsidy at all. It certainly wasn't available when my 2 older ds's were small.
I think any help or support in this climate is fair.
Does everybody still get the 15 hours at 3.5 years for pre-school

I believe they do still get it at 3 years, but if your on certain benefits you get it from 2 years, well here you do anyways.
Why would it be insulting to sahm, are you suggesting that sahm get money for staying at home and looking after kids?

Not sure what you mean. How does it insult SAHPs? If a parent has chosen to stay at home then why do they need help with childcare costs?

I'm sure there will be some group or other that regard any help for working parents as being 'discriminatory' against those that choose to opt out of paid employment and stay home, but I don't agree with them.

I can't work out how this is a good thing unless you have 3or more preschoolers. Given this will replace childcare vouchers which I think are worth more to most people (?)

It's a not remotely well thought through part of the policy.

Not all parents who at at home are lifestyle-choice SAHPs: redundancy is common and securing a new post can take months.

Will childcare becomes unaffordable because the payment ceases, exactly at the time a wage is lost? Or will there be a grace period?

According to moneysavingexpert, families with one or two preschoolers will be worse off under the new scheme than with ccv's. Single parents will be better off, and the scheme will be more widely available.

Why would it be insulting to sahps? For those who don't want to work, why would they care. For those who do, but can't afford the childcare, surely its a good thing??

Many em

I think it's the fact that the govt seems to be trying to socially engineer all parents into work, ignoring the fact that childcare isn't the best environment for all children, that makes it a slight towards sahps.

Also the fact that single-earner families can currently claim childcare vouchers, but wouldn't be able to take advantage of the new scheme.

Imo, the voucher scheme gave out the message 'pre-school education is beneficial to children and society' but the new one says 'get a job you layabouts, your kids will be fine.'

Sorry, meant to say, many employers still don't do CCVs, neither mine or DH's do, so they aren't available to all working parents.

Also, when I was previously made redundant my CCVs and tax credits stopped the same day, no grace period there either if I had wanted to keep nursery places whilst looking for another job.

I was wondering if it might be like contributions-based JSA.

CCVs were no use if your employer didn't offer them, and cannot offer a grace period as they are a salary sacrifice scheme. But thus isn't, and there is potential do to it better. (Not holding my breath, given how administratively appalling this lot are).

Well i am a sahm parent for now and not bothered by it.

Quite a high threshold of income to be able to claim. Given they are cutting back on si many other areas that seems strange and unfair on parents who have children with sn's who would iften like to work but cant find suitable childcare for their child so they have no choice but to be on benefits.

Only in the sense that gay marriage insults straight people who are married.

ie not at all. And you're an asshole if you feel insulted by it.

If you don't need childcare, you are losing nothing.

Who gets "insulted" at help for other people? Particularly help you could access if you were really that insulted by the whole thing.

Are childcare vouchers being abolished? I read Liz Truss saying they would still be an option (for the far smaller number of parents that have them as an option).

since SAHM aren't contributing towards the tax free element, I don't see why its an insult to them. They can take advantage of them if they decide to work, otherwise they are nothing to do with them.

But it's not just the sahp that doesn't qualify it's their partner who is working and do are contributing. That's the bit that some people find unfair (and will be difficult to police) under the current scheme a working parent can claim even if their partner doesn't work.

I wonder if all the people who sacrificed salary to get CCV will get that salary back now. And I wonder if they will think the missed pensions contributions were worth it.

I can see the point about parents with a SAHP feeling this is unfair, but then they don't need childcare.

Also, how are they going to know who has a working partner and who does not? As with the child benefit cuts, which partner will get the money, how will they know if that person's partner stops working, will yet another tranche of people have to start doing self assessment?

There's a discussion on Five Live about this now. The usual "don't have children if you can't afford them" wibble from some of the contributors. And an over-focus on the fact that a couple who both earn up to £150k will be able to claim it. As if the vast majority of people who will claim are earning anything like that much.

But the woman representing SAHMs (the editor of this website is not making a very good case. She's just said that taxpayers money is being spent on criminality, poor health and anti-social behaviour, implying that if we supported more women to stay at home with their children, we could spend less in these areas

Some much more dignified contributions now from some single mothers - one of them is this woman - who have pointed out how hard it is to work and care for children if you're on your own. They've just demolished a splutterer......

And - thankfully - one of them is stressing that the majority of people who will be claiming this aren't earning nearly £300k.......

Why is it unfair? If you are not working, presumably you gave up working to look after your children - so why expect any form of funding from the Govt? Free childcare is still available in the form of 15 hours a week after all.

Equally, if you chose not to look after them yourself, why expect tax payers to fund that choice?