Hope parents-to-be in future have clarity of what ‘30 hours childcare’ looks like

[RollingInTheCreek]

I’ve had 2 friends message today thrilled to bits at the 30 hours funded as ‘by the time they have kids they won’t be paying a penny in childcare’ as long as their kids are in less than 30 hours/week.
Hopefully if the funding is better the reduction will be more but when our 30 hours kicked in the bill went from £1000pcm to £680pcm. Helpful but not such an extreme reduction as we are hoping once they’d charged for all the other hours, food, equipment etc.
I hope it’s made clear so parents can forward plan for any costs, even if much lower relative to now. £680pcm would be a shock if you were expecting £0!

Out of curiousity how many hours childcare is that figure for?? I have 6 month DS and was one of those thinking this was brilliant news. Obviously early to plan but I only plan on having him there one day a week so was thinking it would be free but I suppose there are the extras you mention too that I wasn't aware of

So in our case @embarrassed23 nursery let you use the hours 9-3 only so you pay for the other hours the nursery are open (7:30-9 and 3-6) even if you don’t leave them in all those hours. They also charge for lunch, extras for paint and activities etc. and then for the weeks they don’t apply you’d pay full price for the day and that’s evened out across the year so you have a regular monthly payment. Hope that makes sense.

Sorry to answer your question that’s for 4 days a week.

The funding for the funded hours is a very small amount; it isnt actually enough for the nurseries to run and pay staff for those 30 hours for the number of kids.

They manage by having full time nursery kids parent's subsiding by paying more for the other hours as well as charging for all extras like snacks, activities, lunch etc. Also remember that they 30 hours is term time only; if you have a job that isnt term time only then you need to pay for all the days in the school holidays.

The cost of the other hours is going to increase for everyone to cover the financial loss these free hours will create. So parents who have their kids in full time will be paying a lot more and cost of lunches/activities etc will increase as well and all parents will pay those.

It covers some of the cost of the staffing, no more.
It doesn't cover all of the staffing, or food, nappies, building insurance, utilities, toothbrushes, staff training, sickness cover, admin..... tons I guess. I don't care that we pay towards it all, nowt in life is free, but we're low earners with DTs to pay for and a 4yo who will need after school club too. Every little helps.

The full funding for children from 9 months won’t be available until September 2025. My DS is 9 months old and I think he will be entitled to 15 hours from 2, and then 30 hours from 3 as per normal.

DS1 was in nursery 4 days, his bill dropped from £1000 to £500 when his 30 hours kicked in. He then moved to a preschool (term time only school hours) and we only paid for lunches.

Also, be aware that the 30 free hours is currently term time only. Most nurseries operate on a 51 week contract so the 30 hours becomes 22 hours. Our daughter is in full time and it works out at around £800 pm with the '30 free hours' a week.

It's helpful, but not the free childcare that I had hoped for all those years ago when we had my son and put him into childcare! Even with 30 free hours for both children our childcare bill is at around the £100k mark to date for two children (6 year old and 4 year old)!