AIBU to think UK childcare for under-fives is fundamentally broken?

Also on the ‘you chose to have children’ - we as a society pay out for people’s choices - be it extra healthcare for choosing to smoke or chronic knee conditions for choosing to ski

and at what point is the money spent on the child rather than the parent? When they go to school?

Ratios aren't higher in my country (1:4 for under 3s 1:7 for older, unless only there for less than 5 hours per day, in which case 1:13 is acceptable which applies to preschools) but fees are much lower. They are income and family size based (so income limits are higher in bigger families as they will have less spare income) and highest fee is around 350 euros a month. I paid about 140e when DD was little until she got it free for behavioural needs and 20e a month while DS was in the 3 and under class, then zero a month when he moved up to the older class)

This affordability means its normal for both parents to work, neither has to sacrifice their career, but they also have the opportunity to stay home for 3 years (unpaid leave from their job, with a few hundred euros a month benefit from the government) so don't need to send very small toddlers to nursery if they don't want to.

The alternative to the consumables charge would be paying more for the other hours... then its the unfunded children that suffer. Or not iffer funding

Is it still legal for nurseries to limited the number of funded children?

Yes my understanding is the ratios are much higher in Portugal and Germany

I am not sure it is "broken" as it was always very expensive. It's just one of those things people don't realise until they have children. At least there is some subsidy if earn less than 100k

Childcare would be less if UK would relax its ratios like most other European countries that have less expensive childcare. Parents have said no, though. So 🤷‍♀️

I’m not able to claim the free hours because I earn too much.

The cost of a place is £2,350 a month this year at my nursery. £28,200 (!). It will no doubt go up by 5% in January.

I also have an older child, so my monthly nursery bill is currently over £4,000 a month - nearly £50,000 a year in total.

I will have spent around £200k on nursery fees for my two children.

I am incredibly pissed off to be excluded from the 30 free hours and tax free childcare - I pay a huge amount of tax, and to be excluded from this benefit has left me questioning what exactly I am contributing towards.

I’d be saving around £25,000 off the cost this year if I could claim support. Thats a huge sum of money - I need to earn double that to have it after tax!

It absolutely IS! it involves in our circle.of friends 1 parent, usually the mum but some, like your case it's the dad, taking a hit on their career progression by reducing hours or both working every hour and still not making enough money. It's a lot of pressure on families and relationships. We have a child with (honestly in the grand scheme of things quite mild) SEN but it does add extra stress having to balance finances, feelings, needs and still have some kind of relationship ourselves. It's a lot and it was much harder when we'd 2 lots of nursery fees to pay. It's unsurprising how many families break down in those early days. Thank God we seem to have survived and youngest starts school this year.

Sorry I'm rambling but basically it's a huge pressure onf amilies already dealing with huge pressures. And there's always someone responding to say 'having children is a choice' and it absolutely is and one I'm so glad we made and that we were able to have these babies because we struggled for years to have them and our eldest almost died multiple times in babyhood. I'm so grateful for my family and even if it had been even harder I'd still be so glad we have them. But there are pressures that could be helped and I'd be delighted if those currently parenting babies, toddlers, children with health issues and additional needs etc had an easier time of it than we did.

Yrs there are childminders, they are just a lot more regulated now than in the past.

Years ago, I read about two shift workers (police officers I think) who looked after the others child while they were working. They got in trouble for unregulated childcare.

As a child I went to family day care at a ladies house I'm in Australia do they have that in the UK

It doesn't get easier when they start school, childcare becomes slightly cheaper (I still need to pay £1300 for five weeks of two DC at holiday club 3 days per week) but it becomes a logistical nightmare. Many DC attend our village school as it is the only one that offers wrap around in the area, so it is a battle to book your DC in. The holiday club in the nearby town that offered working hours has gone bust (with zero notice) so my DC go to one that runs 9.30-3, but with travel time rather than my usual quick dash across the village. So me and DH have both had to change our working pattern to make that work. Then there's lunch money, school trips, paying for the wrap around etc. I don't know how those on low incomes or single parents survive.

My DM did this when I was little. She'd childmind for one or two children. It was great because it felt like just having extra friends around and she got to earn a little extra money and her friends got affordable childcare in a home environment.

Of course, she wouldn't have been doing all the developmental observations. But she was naturally a hands on mum so lots of crafting, little walks, play time etc. She's still like that with my DC today

Couldn't see her doing that set up with today's regulations and I get it because safeguarding is worth it. But you would think there could be a middle ground.

That's an absolutely reasonable attitude as long as you don't expect the generation now in childcare to be funding your state pension and NHS care when you're old.

I think they should introduce an opt out waiver for people who think like this. Get a hefty discount on the portion of your taxes that would pay for schooling and childcare....as long as you're happy to forgo your state pension and health care when you retire.

Put like that, I wonder how many people would go for it.

See Cathmawr’s post above: £550 a month for 2 days a week of childcare. 4 days would be £1100, which is considerably more than the £889.48 OP is paying.

Right, but if it costs £1000 in Wales with no subsidy or £1300 in England with a subsidy, wouldn't you rather pay the Welsh price? The point is these 'free hours' haven't made any difference to parents. Parents who were paying full whack before the free hours came in saw their bills go down by a few pounds, not hundreds of pounds, when they did. There's no benefit to any free hours if the overall cost doesn't reduce. It just becomes semantics.

(I'm Scottish with primary age children - I don't have any skin in the game.)

Oh you posted whilst I was typing but made my points in a much better way than I did! 100% agree with this ☝️

For 3 days a week, 10 hours each day, we pay £7.50 a day for food and that is the only consumable fee. Suncream is provided free but nappies, wipes etc need to be sent in. Another nursery we looked at was £13.70 a day for consumables and food, again sending in nappies, wipes etc. Although the non funded hours are so expensive that if I went to work on the last 2 days of the week and paid for childcare, i would only earn an extra £50 a month take home 🙃

I've name changed for this so it isnt outing. We pay £950 a month for 4 days (including 30hrs funding) for DD2. DD1 was in nursery before the 30hrs funding changed to the younger ages so we've paid a lot over a long time. I accept it is part of my continuing to build my career - ive had a promotion during the time my DC have been little so it has been worthwhile. The nursery my kids go to also offer lovely opportunities and it has been lovely seeing the DC thrive there.

A family member of mine works in a nursery in a different part of the country, which charges less than half than what i pay. The difference? Their setting operates as a charity so all profits are reinvested and the funded rate for the county they are in entirely covers the hourly fee. So the consumables charges are very small and genuine. I think a better use of the CMA's time is looking at how many nursery chains are run with big profits extracted, excessive "administrative" salaries etc. My suspicion is that private equity is screwing the sector in the same way as it has done with care homes.

I have also seen school nurseries and I think the DfE is completely wrong to be attempting to widen this at the cost of private nurseries. No holiday clubs near us accept under 5s, so unless you have family childcare, you are completely screwed for holiday childcare. We shouldn't be cramming children into schools even earlier - its completely wrong and I fail to understand how the govt think this will end well.

I know this is going off on a tangent but please don't use the word nappy when referring to adults. It's demeaning, use the word pad instead.

I don’t understand the ‘I didn’t get subsidised childcare so why should you’ posts. Don’t we want life to be easier for those who come after us?

i’m sure the current system is quite inefficient and it might actually be cheaper for the government and better for parents to use a different system

there are plenty of things the government choose to pay for that I don’t really agree with but we live in a society and accept that will be the case

A month off nursery for toilet training?! Hard no from me. That’s a massive lazy and unreasonable response by them. Surely most people use childcare so they can work, so they have to take unpaid leave or use a lot of their annual leave?

Your choice to have kids, i didn’t work properly when mine were tiny, instead I got a job with no pay but came with a 2 bed flat, had one old banger of a car, cloth nappies, breast fed, and we got by just. I went back when they were both in school, 5 hours per day. There was 12.5 hours from age 3 when mine were tiny!

There are many scenarios in which you can say "it was your choice to have children", but this isnt one of them.

I dont recognise the scenario OP describes but maybe thats because my nursery bill is half my mortgage. And we're not charged for consumables.

Asking parents to take a month off for potty training + still pay for it is ridiculous, though.

Totally agree

There's been a massive trend of childcare chains being bought by private equity funds who will seek to extract profit, whether through:

• owning the buildings in separate property companies to maximise rent yields
• centralised admin & charging high fees for it
• introducing unnecessary levels of complexity like software systems to plan meals, all of which can be charged for
• developing "brands" that must be paid for by franchisees

Parents should be contributing to the costs of childcare. But the government should be:

• strongly promoting childminding as by working from home, property costs are vastly reduced

• developing a system of council owned non profit childcare provisions, ideally utilising existing underused spaces like empty classrooms in undersubscribed schools, underused parish/church halls

Unfortunately they will not do this, as they are short sighted. The current metrics of "economic growth" reward turning childcare into a profitable business sector, with jobs being created etc, and government are too stupid to see that if people don't have to spend as much on this, they will have more money to spend on something else. The high cost of childcare also acts as a deterrent to parents working more.