Active discussions

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Paid childcare

Discuss everything related to paid childcare here, including childminders, nannies, nurseries and au pairs.

Original poster

15-30 free hours for parents: what's your opinions?

58 replies

Suzycb · 28/01/2017 22:45

From September, this increases to 30 hours free for parents earnings up to £100,000.00 per each parent. (That's up to £200,000.00 in total). When this scheme initially extended to childminders, I thought to help actual parents especially any single parents out there who wanted to work but can't afford childcare because their child is under 3 years old. As a childminder who works alone means I don't have enough children to be able to even break even after what's the government is offering as in incentive towards the scheme. What's left for working almost 11 hours per day? I feel that we (childminders) haven't received advocates on our behalf to support the dilemma left to survive on. At the moment though not compulsive to accept the scheme within our settings, however, if a parent is offered this deal elsewhere, of course they'll move on. I just I cannot afford surviving on this and causing so many nurseries being shut down because nothing left to pay staff.

OP posts:
Are your children’s vaccines up to date?
Set a reminder
Floralnomad · 29/01/2017 15:42

Can I just ask ( not that it affects me) but when my DC were small , it was the early days of 'funded childcare' and we had to pay the extra to the nursery so that they still got their hourly rate , is this not the case anymore ?

HSMMaCM · 29/01/2017 15:37

The funded rates are about 2/3 my normal rate, so doubling the offer would make a huge difference to me. Our local authority have said if CMs don't offer it, we will probably lose business to those who do. I believe that, because it's what happened with the 15 hours.

There is no consideration that CMs have to make a living wage out of caring for 3 under 5s, where nurseries can have 8-13 children per member of staff (I accept they have additional costs for premises etc).

After costs I would be on less than minimum wage. And I'm a qualified early years teacher.

thisgirlrides · 29/01/2017 10:25

It varies from council to council . I get £3.90ph for funded children and £6ph for non funded so it's a massive loss for me that I simply can't afford on 15 hours let alone 30.

glenthebattleostrich · 29/01/2017 08:29

In my area they are encouraging split care, so half at nursery and half with a childminder. They've also slashed staff back to the bone to increase funding for childminders. They had to do this after 90% of childminders said they wouldn't be offering any funded places and there was a massive shortage of places.

The unofficial agreement is that providers will increase fees across the board so everyone is paying a little more to subsidise the funded places (I've had to increase mine from £4.20 to £4.50 per hour).

thenightmanageress · 29/01/2017 08:20

I currently use 15hours free childcare with our childminder rather than the preschool my DTs are at. I pay more per hour with the preschool and asked our CM if she would rather we 'gave' her the free hours or school & she was happy to have them. Can I ask how much the govt give her? We pay £4 p/h per child for childcare with her & £4.44 p/h at the preschool

nannynick · 29/01/2017 08:12

In area where the funding amount is higher than the amount the provider currently charges, it may work.
How many of those areas are there? What about everyone else?

Time will tell but I expect large chains may do it and offset losses in some areas from gains in others. Small providers in high cost areas will close.

noblegiraffe · 29/01/2017 02:01

2 Pre-schools near me closed because they couldn't afford the 15 hours let alone 30, this is going to be disastrous. And the fact that they are making childminders provide these hours too is ridiculous, they will probably end up shutting down too as they won't be able to run on £3 per hour or whatever the rate will be.

Parents will end up no better for childcare and most likely worse as there will be fewer offerings. The only places that will cope will be big nurseries that charge extortionate rates for 'extras'.

BackforGood · 29/01/2017 01:13

Unfortunately it was a rash pre-election promise made by David Cameron without doing any much research on how they could actually deliver on this.
No Nursery I know can balance the books offering 30 hours of childcare funded on what the Government is promising to pay.
Where I live, there are nowhere near enough places even at the moment for the numbers of children entitled to either 3 yr Education funding nor 2yr funding - how the government thinks it's going to suddenly conjure up twice as many places, I'm really not sure.
that's before you star taking into account the fact that they have not factored in even more than a tiny % of the additional funds needed to support either children, or families with additional needs.