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

I live in Wales, in a reasonably priced location so I don't think the prices are as bad as SE England but we have no funding for free hours until 3!

My DD attends 2 days a week and it costs us approx £550 monthly (after the 20% childcare offer). She turned 3 last month but we have to wait until Sep to benefit from free hours.

£550 might not sound a lot but proportionate to local wages it's still a shit tonne 😔 Honestly it's a big factor in us sticking with one

Yes the problem is that they require a profit. More investment is needed into public nurseries that are attached to primary schools. These could still be as a paid for basis, but all profits to go back into the system.

Other countries manage it.

It was pretty broken when mine went 10 years ago there was no childcare funding (if you were working) til they hit 3-4 (and it was term-time only and only kicked in the summer after they turned 3), which for one of my summer-borns meant we got about 6 months of funding total. The nursery fees were always more than our mortgage. I've no idea how other countries do it but my friends in European countries are very well supported and childcare there is seen as a good careeer. State provision is probably the only way this can happen . It's no better when they start school as we only have private wrap around care which is £25 a day and holiday clubs are insane. I worked because it meant I built up flexibility for when the kids went to school and I mostly work from home now.

It's certainly deeply flawed but not sure completely broken. you are using 34 hrs per week at a year-round nursery (and don't be ridiculous thinking you should get money off when you are on holiday or for the 1.5hrs a day you don't use - they still have the same bills and wages to pay and they cannot sell the hours you don't want elsewhere, so you have to buy them)

The government funding is only "supposed" to be funding 22.5 hrs of that but in reality the government funding is ridiculously low per hour and cannot genuinely be expected to cover more than about 17hrs of good quality childcare - the few nurseries that can genuinely manage 30 hrs per week tend to operate term-time only with a strict 6hrs per day 9-3 and often have a subsidy in the form of rent-free council-owned premises, but most nurseries can only make ends meet by having extra charges in creative ways that get around loopholes, or they will go bust, they are not charities. If you don't like it, get a place at a nursery that only offers 30hrs pw termtime only and use a nanny for the rest of the time - that will be more expensive I promise you.

Given all this, I would expect your weekly bill to be about 50% of the real cost. Your £899pcm works out as just over £200pw and a real childcare cost of a little over £12 per hour of which you are paying half. That's a perfectly reasonable cost to pay for any professional service.

No the government should not be providing more than 30hrs. They should pay a more realistic cost for those 30hrs though.

I support universal childcare because todays children will be paying our pensions and social care (and doing that work). Child free couples will still be relying on the next generation to support them in old age so I dont think they should be exempt from funding it

What a fucking depressing thread. ‘Why should I pay for your kids’ and ‘it was far worse in my day, stop moaning’ crap. Tax the fucking billionaires and stop acting like keeping society going is a luxury. Falling birth rates aren’t all they’re cracked up to be and you might realise that when you’re waiting 8 hours for your nappy to be changed in the care home because having children was too expensive decades ago.

Private nurseries are making fortunes and pretending they are struggling due to low funding from the government so have to rip off parents instead. This is the cost of 'care' being privatised

My ds1 who is now 11 only went to nursery part time but a full time place at the age of 3 would have cost us something like £1300 a month. So to me £890 for full time childcare, all year round, seems very reasonable. I appreciate it’s still a huge amount of money. The system is not great, but it’s better than it was.

No, childcare shouldn't be 'free'. It's parental choice to have children and childcare is so people can work. You work around family/partner to make it accessible. It doesn't have to be a nursery either. Childminders are usually a lot cheaper. When my son was preschool age, he went to a private nursery for 2 days a week and a childminder the rest of the time. Once he was old enough to attend state nursery, the childminder did outside of those hours and took him/collected him from there. This was an affordable way to do things, and I was a single parent on a low income. There was no such thing as 30 free hours of childcare then so had to cover everything myself.

i live in Portugal - there is free state childcare from 3-6 - you pay the lunch and snacks, lunch cost depends on your social
security bracket so primary school lowest levdl
dony pay any lunch fees. There are also free state nursery’s under 3 too. So there’s no excuse imo

But I was a childminder for 10 years on 2000’s. I charged £30 a day or £3 per hour. So full time (50 hours per week) was £600-750 that included food/ outings. Most people didn’t get help, low earners got tax credits which paid 70% to them and they paid me. A few used childcare vouchers for 20% covered

My sons nursery is £45 a day if not getting funded hours and £8 for food/extras per day if eligible for funding but you can provide meals/nappies yourself and not pay the £8.

This!
My kids are 23 and 28.
All I got for the eldest was child benefit. About £18 a week. I paid for his preschool space. No tax credits.....no salary sacrifice...no tax free childcare or 30 hours funding..

Tax credits came in around the time my daughter was born. Every 3 or 4 years they'd decide that overpaid us and we had to pay it back. Stopped claiming it in the end. Still had to pay for childcare....

Anyway.....I've now been a childminder for 25 years. All 3 of my preschool children have 30 hours funding per week over 4 days. Their weekly bill on top is £21 each, which they pay monthly via tax free childcare so it reduces to around £64 per month.
I don't charge consumables and parents provide everything apart from baby wipes and snacks. It works for them and for me.
But I do think a lot of them have it good these days... one of my parents monthly bill would be over £700 without the funding but its £64.....

£120 for the first, £84 for the second, £40 for the third and £0 for subsquent per month as a maxum is pretty close to universal child care.

Sorry but that sounds like good value to me. I paid £750 per month to a childminder in 2010, for five days a week. She was worth every penny.

I couldn't afford a 2nd child because of the cost so I did the responsible thing. You have other children. Why should I pay for you to have what I could not? You aren't being reasonable.

You can only claim UC for childcare costs if you are a working parent 🤔
You also can't get UC to cover consumables or food.

It is broken but depends on the area completely. My bill is £330 for the entire year for my 2 year old as I get 30 free hours and tax free childcare and my childminder only charges me for the 2 hours a week over that. he’s moving to a school nursery with the same mantra so I’ll be paying £10 a week for the extra 2 hours I need and get to pay that via tax free childcare. It’s not been easy though as most local school nurseries don’t do wraparound as they have to have early years trained staff at breakfast and after school club. It means he can’t go to the nursery his brother went to at the school his brothers are at, which sucks from a relationship point of view for them as he loves playing with them, but I can’t complain at the cost and his nursery is only 7 minutes from their school.

What’s insane to me is that the 30 hours funding is term time only rather than year round, I’m a teacher so that’s fine for me but not most people. Nurseries are year round (unless attached to a school so 2+) and so term time only contracts are more expensive per day anyway so there’s little overall difference. I knew teachers paying the year round as it was only £150-£200 a year more and meant there kid went odd days in the holidays and they got a break.

what really peeves me is that as a working parent you get 30 hours (actually 22.5) then tax free childcare, but this really means you’re paying for most of the hours if your kid is full time in nursery. Whereas if you claim UC you can claim those 30 free hours plus up to 85% of costs (up to £1071 a month for first child) so you end up paying almost nothing.

I definitely think nursery fees should be income assessed but also capped at a low amount per month for all parents (like they are in Spain) but nursery workers there are currently striking over not having a pay rise in decades and I think the ratios are really high there and there’s a different level of expectation for early years provision.

They are a profit making business, dont be fooled by the my nursery will close narrative. Yes some small nursery would shut but the big chains make plenty of money, they take advantage of their staff.

its a similar system to landlords, the more subsidy the higher the fees will rise.

There is no answer, other than government nurseries.

lots of nurseries are also show cases now, with flowers in reception, wooden expensive furniture, willow frames etc… whist lovely those things add up very quickly. .

I think child care costs should be tax deductible

my sil in Germany paid very little for childcare - the state she lives in subsidises it. Maybe they need to go and do a study of childcare there

We pay slightly less in taxes here, I mean like 2.4% less, I think the difference here is thqt childhood is seen as an investment in society as a whole, rather than a private parental bill

Which makes a lot of sense.

We are so backwards here

I agree - it is only fair that there is some contribution from the parents.

Don't know how these nurseries get away with such high costs. I'm a childminder in West Yorkshire and have just been audited by the LA. They scrutinised everything and I got bollocked because some parents collected 5 or 10 minutes earlier each day than the funded hours I had been paid for them. They heavily support the parents not the providers. I don't stretch hours due to my holiday dates but if parents haven't used all 30 hours a week I let them bank hours for school holidays. I have a voluntary charge of £8 per day for food etc. And several families don't even want to pay that. And I can't make them. They have to just supply own food.
It's like I'm employed by the council but get no benefits of employment. They dictate what I'm allowed to charge and when I get paid.
Mind blowing that some parents are paying £800 + a month for funded childcare!

Remember its not just the price of the food itself (3 meals and snacks) but paying for some one to cook and prepare it too.

That doesnt come to £22 I agree, but its not the same as a packed lunch. (Based on school dinner prices, maybe £10?)

The funding doesn't cover the true cost of the childcare but big private nursery chains are also making millions.
This is the problem with having childcare as a for-profit model.

How can they justify £22 per day for consumables? And as part of their funding agreement, they have to offer you alternative of bringing your own. If it’s compulsory then they are breaking the law. I’m involved in a preschool where parents provide nappies, wipes etc plus packed lunch. We pay no rent (as are part of a church) and ask for a voluntary donation of £1 per day (though less than half of parents pay). We pay living wage or more to staff and have better ratios than required and the finances just about work if we have sufficient children but it’s tight, so I understand why businesses with rent to pay struggle but they can’t break the law to do make the finances work!