Childcare reform: what about parents not on benefits?

Yes, you need to claim disability benefit if you can't work and you are struggling.

OP if you aren’t working why do you need help towards childcare? If you have a health condition that means you can’t work you will be getting PIP and potentially other benefits which you could put towards childcare.

Alternatively if you have a sick note you can try claim universal credit

You need to claim PIP

If you were on benefits both of you would need to be working unless one of you were a carer or on the right level of disability

If you don't work why do you need full time childcare? If you are unable to work you are eligible for various helps.

In which case you’ll be able to claim PIP (varying levels depending on your need) and ESA, in some areas this can also enable you to claim help towards council tax.

If you don't work why do you need to spend so much on childcare? If you are so unwell that you aren't able to care for your dc have you explored other options for this. Support services/non means tested disability payments?

Indeed.
This is the problem with the benefits system. If you happen to work full time but your hourly rate isn’t that high, you’re hung out to dry. It is an unfair system,
No two ways about it.

I think the key here is that your take home salary is actually £27k. Leaving you with £13k.

If your take home salary was £13k, then your taxed income would be about £13,250.

Which means that £34k, becomes an income of £13,250 when you deduct childcare after tax. It's counter intuitive but we're shocking. How does a family live off of £13,250? That wouldn't cover rent here.

@Fundays12 i know it’s not hugely helpful but the 30 hours can be stretched. It’s then about 22 hours a week year round, which could give you a couple of full days or even 4 afternoons/mornings depending on how flexible the work is you found.

As a mum of 3 I agree with this. 2 are primary age and one in nursery. I cannot afford to work more hours as childcare in the school holidays would cost about £600 a week. I won't earn that plus it's nearly impossible to find care for 3 dcs especially when one of the kids has complex additional support needs. Breakfast and after school clubs are £60 a day. The only solution me and DH could find is him to work full time and me to work some weekends

Term time care does not work as parents don't work term time in most cases.

I think we're all a little sick about those on benefits not earning their benefit. I think they (everyone on benefits who is not diagnosed with a disability or caring - and checked they're caring- for someone with a disability) should be paid minimum wage and have to work the right no. of hours for their benefits - that includes everything they get funded by the state in rent etc. Most would need to work almost a full time job wouldn't they? Would that mean we suddenly have enough staff to run businesses? Yes!

Why isn't government looking at that? If you're not working and on benefits, do you need more childcare anyway?!

OP your income etc is not enough to pay 14k post tax out as childcare. Can this be reduced? Do you work and add to the coffers, is that why you need childcare?

I recall at one stage paying £20k from my net income in child care when there was only me working - hubby was very ill - and I was on a c£40k/£45k salary. The kids were both less than 2 years old. My hubby ended up taking on child care because we just had no money (going back to the 00's here) but same principle and I then bought childcare vouchers via work to fund sessions at the local nursery. My dh looked after the kids from then on and never went back to work.

I do agree with this but it's not just low waged jobs that are affected, childcare in this country I believe is higher than any other OECD country (don't quote me apologies if I'm wrong!) and many other developed nations have heavy state subsidised childcare. People earning decent salaries of £30 - £40k are not low waged employees but childcare still can be crippling especially if you dare to have more than one child. As I said, my husband has a FTE salary of around £40k but his net daily rate is roughly the same as our two nursery aged kids being in nursery on a day my eldest doesn't get the funded hours. People around us who are older or don't have kids find that absolutely shocking and it is. His wage doesn't really need to go up, it's a decent wage, it's just the childcare is crippling due to lack of state investment which they do have in lots of other developed nations. He's gone down to a 30hr week and probably wouldn't have realistically if childcare wasn't so expensive.

free bus fare?

Not the point of the thread but do you work OP? You only mention your husbands salary but have £14k childcare costs for two kids? I don't understand why you'd have those costs unless you also work and then surely your household salary is therefore quite a bit more than £34k?

I do agree with you though OP nevertheless, childcare costs are crippling and we've made a lot of financial decisions purely because of them. We have two in nursery atm as well but only two days a week atm. Our eldest starts school in September but our childcare costs will actually increase then because wraparound and holiday cover for those two days a week will cost overall more than the consumables top up we currently pay for them at nursery! I only work 3 days a week and DH only works 4. He dropped his 5th day recently after we realised that even on his FT salary of £40k his net daily pay was basically the same as a day of them both in nursery.

Ok whilst it isn’t a woman’s issue - it is a family issue

I’m grateful I could stay home and raise my own children - why should we all assume that women are desperate to get back to work to keep up with the male earnings?

I was earning £12K and childcare was £36K plus - no point in working for a £24K deficit which was roughly DH’s earnings.

Why we are a nation focused on child = costs

Why shouldn’t we be able to have babies and lives decent lives on salaries that pay the mortgage and look after our own children?

Put it this way - the government are hell bent on getting woman to work so they can reap the rewards of taxation - rather than give woman decent salaries they offer to pay the childcare which is temporary solution

Now imagine instead woman earns X which covered bills and mortgage without government help which meant once the children are in school they can be rewarded from their own earnings? Imagine that!! But no they carry on in low incomes which barely cover the cost of going to work.

We need higher wages.

I hope for those working the tax free childcare amount increases a little maybe £3 or £4 rather than the current £2 for every £8 parents pay.
I have two kids I decided to have two kids because that’s what we can afford and we are able to currently pay for child care but with the cost of everything going up including childcare are providers it is extremely tight.

@Oigetoffmylawn But that’s why women are the lowest earners: maternity leave, going back part time or not at all after leave – being the one to drop out of the career race to make ends meet when childcare costs too much, etc. It only takes a short while for the men to race ahead and the women can never catch up, so then it makes even more sense they’re the ones to stay home after second DC, only pick up term time hours once they start school, etc. It’s a vicious cycle. Reframing this is a societal issue not a women’s issue and addressing childcare costs but also availability of wraparound care and holiday care would help address women’s earnings, then once – on a societal level – women earn equally, it’s more likely more women will be able to go back to work. Of course there will always be those who choose to be a SAHP, or to go part time, or to have the less stressful job so they can be on hand for the 900 childhood illnesses, etc. But that person doesn’t always have to be female and it’s not as simple as “women earn less” – we earn less because of children then we frame it as “women need childcare”. Meanwhile the DHs with their important jobs are off to the races.

Whilst I get what you are saying it is true that women are usually the lowest earners. So if you have a 2 income family, you're only just making ends meet on those 2 salaries and child care is the equivalent of one salary, then it makes sense, short term, for lowest salary not to work. Yes it makes it harder to get back in to the job market, and yes it removes things like the possibility of promotion, wage increases etc but if it will cost the family income for one person to work, then lots of families have little choice but to have one parent not work. We were lucky, the lowest income in our household was still more than full time nursery + cost of working, and even if it hadn't we could have afforded a short term loss on the high income. But neither job would allow compressed hours, flexible working or part time (we both asked), so we really couldn't reduce the cost of child care.

Because her complaint is that the government isn’t paying some of the £14k childcare bill.

If she’s not working (and she only mentions her husband’s salary - UC is about household income), then it’s obvious that she should get a job to help pay for the childcare the family are choosing to pay for.

My monthly childcare bill for 2 children 8-6pm 4 days a week. Is £1,849.94. This is including the 30 free hours for my oldest. Well that's what is was last month.

Nursery have sent through an email about fees increases from next month, my youngest has gone up £102 a month. I can't work out the extra for my eldest. But my guess will be our bill now will be £2000 a month. £24,000 a year. It actually makes me feel physically sick.

I'm not entitled to any benefits because my husband earns £34k a year

What js your salary too though? Presumably if you are paying for childcare you both work?

You’re being massively unreasonable. And you’re missing a key point, that with the additional allowance, those who were not eligible before may be entitled to some help now. Those who aren’t, but earning under 100k will get the tax free childcare.
Those working and on UC don’t get the whole lot of childcare funded anyway, so they still have quite a lot of money to find to pay for it. When we looked into it we’d be eligible for UC but the amount was equal to less than the amount we could claim via tax free childcare so we did that route instead. It’s not black and white.
Dont forget those not working don’t get any help with childcare til the 15 hours at 2, which is a scheme nothing to do with providing childcare for parents but to provide enrichment for children who may otherwise be disadvantaged compared to their peers.
So really you’re bashing those where two parents are working and also paying their taxes but claiming a small amount of government help.