How does your childminder cover school hols?

[PeachCobblerz]

What is most common booking system for school hols with childminders?

1. No set days, just booked on a first come first serve basis and you have to use family help or annual leave to cover school hol childcare combined with the random days the childminder can give you

OR

2. a set contract agreed in advance for specific days and hours every week during every school hol. Predictable and reliable.

I've experienced both, just wondering what the norm is?

1 for both childminders we’ve used. They are usually flexible with hours and days.

Number 1 only works if you have support. My family are either too unwell or live too far away, and my friends all work full time so sharing childcare with them isn't an option.

I don't know how people manage. I've had to turn down multiple jobs because I just can't get holiday cover and annual leave won't stretch far enough. I'm starting to think other people are just more lucky with having healthy parents or friends who are more available.

Oh and before anyone suggests it I have looked into holiday clubs, not much available locally.

Do you have a partner? If so, can you split the holidays with them? One of my colleagues works on a 75% contract and works full time during term time and then has holidays off.

2 is the norm for the children who have year-round contracts with our childminder. We have a term-time contract for our children and she does some ad-hoc holiday / INSET days for us at our request. We are very lucky to have her.

usually here holidays are divided up at the start of the contract so both parties know how many weeks etc....
priority given to those that used CM more..

i did mixture of leave/holiday clubs and childminder... no family support at all...wouldn't turn down jobs because of school holiday cover and liked family holidays
norm is 5 weeks leave so 2 for summer, 1 oct, 1 easter, one adhoc...
so we did 2 weeks in the summer then 4 weeks cm or club .

you can get parental leave as well wiyh most organisations so did use that 1 year but is unpaid...

I've done both. Some people want the security of having full time care booked and are happy to pay for it.

More often though people want to minimise their childcare costs and don't want to pay for care when they are on holiday or Grandma is visiting so they prefer ad hoc.

If you're prepared to pay to guarantee a full time place with a childminder even if you don't use it, I'm sure most childminders would be more than happy with that?

Yes but we worked out our leave entitlements and with one week to go away every year and a couple of days at Christmas there wouldn't be enough to cover all the hols. I think between us we could manage to cover a third of what we need. So we'd have to hope the childminder could cover the rest but it's completely up in the air and not clear whether she could.

If we don't have leave left and she can't cover it then I really don't have any options other than to request unpaid leave or fake a sicky, both of which will probably piss off the boss.

Maybe I'm better off finding a job that could be done from home if necessary so that I can at least stick a dvd on and try and work on a laptop if push comes to shove.

My childminder used to not have many kids in holidays so she would have mine whenever i asked but she usually went on holiday end of aug so i would try and book that time off.

My cm agrees which school hols she is available for, at the start of the year/contract. You sing up for specific weeks. She then splits the years cost across 12 equal payments.

If she has space, at the time, she can take extras, or if you want to swap a day, but otherwise that's it sorted for the year.

1. Regular customers get 'first dibs' on extra hours outside their normal contracted hours in the hols, which are honoured year round. If it wasn't possible to do that I'd find another childminder

Just find another childminder who will have them year round?

Our child minder offered full year places to children that worked well with her own. This made sense as the children would be there for a full day as opposed to a few hours.

Our after school CM took mine for the full holidays unless she was away (had similar age kids) but she only sold enough year round places so that she could do full holiday cover

What are your friends who have children doing with them during the holidays? There must be someone in a similar situation to you and you could share the childcare.

How old is your child? Would it be an option to take them to stay with family for a week? Our families live really far away but I'm hoping to be able to do this when mine are older.

At the moment my youngest goes to the CM all year round, so we get preference on the days we want to send my oldest. We just tell the CM which days we want DD to go and that's it.

So is the issue with the childminder that you only want odd days here and there that you/your partner can't cover?

Surely if you just contracted 10-12 weeks of full time holiday care per year that would be fine?

If you would rather have a set contract, why don’t you book her upfront for the rest of the year for the holidays you need? What’s happening now? When are you checking with her to see availability for holidays?

With our childminder we basically were paying her for full time and that was the holiday assumption. She planned to have ours full time in school holidays and if we didn’t need that time we took a “holiday” - I think we had one week we could use whenever. She also had two holiday weeks she could use whenever, and she would tell us around the start of the year when they would be - so we could plan our holidays to coincide with hers, or basically pay her anyway when we took the children away to save the place.

If you want her to be available any time you want, you should book for all the holiday time in advance. Would she let you do this? When does she accept holiday bookings?

so I said 1 because it’s ad hoc at our child minder, but we don’t have any relatives to help and as you say annual leave doesn’t cover much of the school hols. plus my job isn’t flexible so I can’t take leave at half term.

I work 4 days a week so just 4 days in half term to cover. Dh takes one day annual leave. We used to use cm for all the remaining days but now the dc are 9 and 11, they have the odd day at home when one of us is wfh.

it was never a problem relying on a childminder for school hols, but think we are lucky with our childminders plus they liked to work as much as possible so almost never took holidays.

Slightly confused - when you work out your leave etc and plan for the year, don't you at that point talk to your childminder about dates and then you can adjust your leave requests if needed if she can't do some dates?

If your childminder won't plan ahead to the extent that you need, you probably need a childminder who will or use holiday clubs instead

Are you able to buy extra holiday from your employer?

A third?

DH and I get 25 days each plus BH - so that's 10 weeks. a joint holiday and a week at xmas leave 6 weeks. There are 13 weeks school holidays.

DS goes to his childminder after school 3/4 days a week. In the holidays we use her for 2/3 full days a week and cover the other 2 or 3 days ourselves.
So Feb hols she had Tuesday and Wednesday available, DH has booked Monday off and I'm off Thursday and Friday.

Easter hols we've already got him booked in with CM for the first Monday and Tuesday, DH Wednesday and me Thursday one week, then similar set up the week after.

Summer holidays he does a football camp near my work twice a week 9-3 for 3 of the weeks which helps.

Current childminder doesn't work holidays (she only does school age kids). I don't mind as holiday clubs are cheaper anyway. Those are first come first served but there's two I alternate between and I've never not got a space.
Previous childminder took 2 weeks holiday but otherwise was happy to have the kids she had after school in the holidays but would only charge for days used so long as you gave sufficient notice of holidays etc.

I wouldn't be posting here if I could do that.

Friends unable to help, I feel it would be rude to interrogate them as to why.

Far away family are unreliable and complicated. It's a shit situation that breeds resentment.

Close family all too infirm / old / ill.

Mumsnet never seems to believe people when they say they have no options, but I really don't. Count your blessings everyone, you must have a lovely support network, I'm pleased for you but remember that others aren't in your lucky position.

All local childminders are full apart from one who seems not to like planning very far ahead no matter how much I push.

Options are very restricted locally for holiday clubs with only one in operation that suits much older kids but is notoriously poor when it comes to little ones. I've used them before and had problems.