AIBU to feel annoyed about ‘free childcare’

Trust me you arent as annoyed as the childless who are paying for your childcare

Look at it this way. You produce a product that costs you £5.00 to make without a profit. That’s all the costs involved in getting that product ready to sell. Ideally, you’ll sell it for a profit. There is a huge demand for this product.

Imagine now that the government comes along and tells you that you can only sell it for £4.00. You will lose £1.00 per product, despite there being a demand, and the demand makes it worse because you lose £1.00 many times over.

That is the reality over ‘funded’ hours of childcare. It will cost the nursery, preschool or childminder - to keep it simple here and this is not actually the amount as it varies from local authority to local authority- £5.00 to have your child in their care for 1 hour. That’s covering their costs. The government says ‘oh no, have these FREE hours’ but only pays the childcare provider £4.00 per hour. So over a week they lose £30 per child. Times by lots of children.

People want qualified, responsible and trained staff to look after their children, in a nice environment and with lovely toys, activities and facilities. It comes at a cost. Even the regular mandatory first aid and safe training, let alone rates, electricity, water, food etc. The if you have 20 kids costing you, the provider, £30 a week, that’s £600 you are short in just one week. It’s not the provider’s fault - it’s the government for promising what it can’t deliver. At least not without losing standards or childcare facilities themselves.

I suppose it depends on where you live.

My daughter’s 15 hours kick in after the Easter Hols, she’s currently with a Childminder, the cost has gone from £40/day to £5 so can’t complain at all.

I feel the same about my DS current nursery have been using them since he was 9months old. Just turned 3 and moving him to a term time only pre school and arranging working pattern to be part year to reduce costs. And to top it off in the new tax year they are increasing prices!

Same here. Our DS came along unexpectedly after we’d decided not to have children. It’s bittersweet as from the moment he was born we both said we’d changed our minds and wanted more… and then we sent him to nursery. Now we can’t afford another child. And if we wait until he’s in school and so are paying a lot less in childcare, we aren’t sure we can then put ourselves all the way through it again financially when we’ve finally come out the other side.

Same here.

I'll be spending £4,000 a month if I have another.

Just...obscene.

Some of the comments on here are so valid. The cost of UK childcare is the sole reason we’re debating not having another child right now.

You are paying out what for many is their total take-home pay. That is quite a ridiculous amount but 'free' childcare is not about you saving money but for keeping women with children in the workforce (keeps wages down) and making money out of childcare (commodifying child care). I would see this 'free' childcare as more equitable if it was actuall cash paid to the mother (or other carer) to use towards the childcare they wanted, whether by staying at home with the child, paying grandparents or family, or using a nursery. This won't happen in the UK since the entire package is geared to getting women out to work as soon as possible after birth and making money for the childcare industry. Mothers staying at home or using their parents as carers won't do that. Other countries e.g. Sweden, Finland, count rearing children and caring for them as part of the GDP, which it is, for society can neither function nor grow without people rearing children.

It’s an absolute racket.

The government. The UK is the worst in Europe.

I don't get why anyone is shocked did you not read what the actual nurseries etc. have been saying all along?
Funding is for 38 weeks a year and after the admin costs taken by LAs they are paid around 50 to 60% of their usual fees. Nurseries and settings have been closing at the fastest rate ever costs are increasing including minimum wage ......have you lobbied the government to pay a realistic rate?

Yes, it's ridiculous

So detrimental to women and children too

It's funded not free. Nurseries are closing as they can't afford to keep open on what the government gives them for `free' hours.

My (almost) 3 year old goes for 3 half days a week, they charge £17 for consumables and our bill has gone down by about £200, which is a decent saving. The huge disparity between private nurseries is quite shocking though!

We had the same issue when we got 30 'free' hours. DS went for 3 full days (30hrs in total), but the free hours were limited to 6hrs per day so we had to pay for the other, along with food and other additions. In reality we saved very little.
I get it from the nursery point of view, but it's a very misleading message from the government.

I am unconvinced many private nurseries are struggling financially- the few round here seem to been creating a healthy profit

I was a childminder. I was bloody good at it! Got outstandings in all areas.

Then they had us writing big sets of policies and procedures, risk assessments. Then it was we need to do qualifications in childcare, even though I had been doing it for years. The amount of paperwork increased.

Don't get me started on OFSTED inspections, meetings, regular trainings.

It became more about paperwork than childcare and the stress forced me to quit.

In my mum's day, it was a private arrangement between her and another mother and fees were all relative to the setting, way more affordable because there was no beurocracy and stress.

The amount of hoops you have to jump through now is what is making childcare so expensive. Mothers helping mothers was the best way, in my opinion. Home from home.

I think a lot of women (and men) would prefer to stay at home but they have a mortgage that needs two wages to pay for.
If they sort the housing market, then these funded places may not be needed by many.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/rishi-sunak-koru-kids-akshata-murty-b2398515.html

Mrs Sunak has shares in a few.

Not the first thing to be introduced over the last few years where the provider is underfunded. I assume there are not many nurseries run by Tory donors.

Pre-election gimmick instead of proper funding and the age reduction being phased in.

One thing a lot of people forget is in the eras when more women have stayed at home with young children, they also had more of them!

The government would be less bothered about pushing families to use nurseries & work, if it was a choice between a parent caring for four of their own children at home vs 3 of other people's as a nursery nurse.

That’s a ridiculous notion. Having children in the UK has become a luxury. How do you suggest people afford children without a fairer income distribution model, better taxation and social policies? These are connected problems.

I’m a Brit in Europe. I pay the top end childcare cost due to my earnings. Given it’s a form of indirect taxes, I pay around £100 a month for 12 hours a day childcare. It means I don’t fret about taking on more challenging roles and I pay 50% taxes on my income. If that means that people less financially fortunate get free childcare, so be it. That’s what it means to live in a fair, equitable society. We put into a pot based on ability so that society as a whole benefits.

Childcare provisions are a societal necessity. It must be adequately funded by the government as part of an effective social services programme.

Oh not this again! Many of ‘the older generation’ understand very well, as it affects their families. Don’t try setting one generation against another on this issue.

Bellamountain
They won't do that because we have a labour market shortage, and economically as a country, we are not productive enough to afford having women at home only looking after their own 1 or 2 children

They will only do things that involve increasing the average number of children cared for by each adult and thus freeing up other adults for increased labour market participation.

You may not like it, but its true, unless most people are willing to accept a significant drop in living standards.

Also maybe offer better and longer maternity pay (with job protection) so parents can actually look after their children too.