30 hours Free

[Chasabeth]

Hey guys,

Sorry if this has been batted about on here a bit but I wanted to get people's experiences of nurseries offering the 15/30 hours a week free (as of September).

Our nursery where my DS goes has sent out an email to say that kids will only qualify for the 30 hours if they are full time. On their scheme we will only get 11 hours a week free as my DS only goes 2 days a week. I do kinda understand as they don't get full funding for 30 hours.

I am expecting my 2nd and due in September when he will qualify for the free childcare care so I thought ho hum, we will use the 15 (aka 11) hours a week and he can go 2 mornings. But they have now said that to qualify for this he will have to be in nursery for a minimum of 2 full days and we will be charged for the extra hours. This works out to nearly £300pm! I'll only be on the lowest Mat pay and can't afford this.

I wanted to see if this is right? Can a nursery really do this? I'm fuming to be honest, he loves it there and I don't want to move him but I feel like they've backed me into a corner. I've emailed a few other nurseries in the area to get an idea of their polices, but any advice would be great

[LIZS]

Are you sure the 11 hours isn't the 15 hours termtime spread across the full year? They can define when the "free" sessions are but you can't be forced to go longer.

[Chasabeth]

Yes, the 11 hours is the 15 hours term time, and apparently that is their policy. So in order to get the 11 hours free I have to put my DS in 2 full days a week and pay the extra. If I just put him in 2 mornings (totalling the 11 hours) they are saying they will charge me.

[Starlight2345]

It is about nurseries been able to afford the funding.

I am a childminder and the fee's I get won't be that off however the nurseries are struggling due to there overheads.

[Dlah]

This does not make sense to me at all! I work in a nursery, I submit the funding for our children. By our local authority you can claim up to 10 hours funding in 1 day, if you're doing 2 full days you should get your full 15 hours entitlement and pay the diff;

E.g. We are £44 a day = £88 a week for 2 days, £52.50 for 15 hrs funding in our area = you'd pay £35.50 difference.

I would ring your local authority and speak to them, it doesn't sound right what your nursery is saying

[HSMMaCM]

You can only claim 10 hours in a day if the Nursery is offering sessions this way.

[TeachermummyV]

I'm livid.
We need 6 hours a day for five days, so
I was expecting to pay for the additional hours. At the moment, we pay for the additional 15hours per week
Got a letter from the nursery saying I can only use the 30 hours in three 10 hour slots, (but I'll only use 18hours of this I.e6hrs per day) leaving me 12 hours to pay on the other two days. But they've put up the hourly rate and meal costs, so it's actually going to cost me more when we have 30hours than it did when we had 15!

[insancerre]

Nurseries are being massively underfunded on this
Please watch this video
It explains it very well
champagnenurseries.co.uk/

[TeachermummyV]

I know. Nurserys have to be cunning in order to prevent us actually using the hours. I know that they are underfunded for these free hours.
Bloody Tories will be shouting from the rooftops that they've helped working families, but it's grossly underfunded and is worse than the previous system.

[HSMMaCM]

10 hour slots will be easier to allocate as well. Otherwise they'd need to fit in 4 hour slots around yours, and those 4 hours might be split between first thing and last thing.

All the examples we have been given have been in 10 hour slots, or 5 (8-1 and 1-6). Each setting needs to find what works best for them. I have one child on 10 hour sessions and another two on 6 hour sessions, because that works for me and their parents.

[insancerre]

Nurseries can dictate how they allocate the funded hours
They don't even have to offer them at all
Or they can limit the number of children who take up the funded hours
Its not about greed or being awkward, its about survival