Should my 14-year-old be paid for helping at holiday camps?

[aimee41]

Dd 14 has been doing a hobby for 8 years now and has recently been asked to help at holiday camps. The children attending pay £40 a day to attend. There is obviously hall hire but no other expenses for the coach. When dd was asked to help last time we didn’t ask re payment, I guess we hoped the coach would offer.
Dd has now been asked again. On the one hand she would do it for free, but I don’t want her exploited. There are sometimes other helpers but they are older and help in regular classes and I am pretty sure get paid. Then there are other volunteers but these are mostly mothers running refreshments stands at particular events, not teaching children. Has anyone else experience of this? Thank you

But I’m pretty sure during school holiday times they can work a certain number of hours and get paid.

As has been mentioned a few times up thread, under 16s can work a max of 5h a day in school holidays and may, depending on local rules, require specific permission from the LA

Half term is next week, it’s unlikely any permit or adding to payroll will happen by then, even if the teacher was willing. The most likely outcome is that she gets by without a volunteer, second most likely is that she asks someone else from DD’s class if they would like to volunteer, third most likely there’s some kind of reciprocation like a voucher or a discount on future classes

She’s got a great skill that the coach should be willing to pay her for

No offence to the DD, but has she? Or would any other teen at the dance class do just as well?

Employment laws make it tricky (on the other hand, volunteering means she will be being treated worse than if she were employed). But I agree with you that it's unreasonable for there not to be some reciprocation from the teacher to your DD.

I think I would do something along the lines of checking with the Dance teacher that she was insured for DD (because if she isn't employing her, she may have overlooked that aspect) and asking for a £180 (£10/hr) discount on her fees for class. Then I'd give DD the £180 when I paid her next tuition and remind her it was because she did all the volunteering.

That's way cheaper for the teacher than paying someone (not just the hourly wage but all the tax etc.) and skirts the employment issue, but doesn't let her just use DD without DD being valued.

That's way cheaper for the teacher than paying someone (not just the hourly wage but all the tax etc.)

Minimum wage for a 16 year old is £8 an hour and the threshold for paying employer NI is £5k a year (which equates to £96 a week but I’m not sure if it kicks in on the first week of earnings if there aren’t expected to be ongoing earnings at that level).

So I wouldn’t say it’s “way cheaper”

My Dd used to help her judo coach with training for younger members and helping them at tournaments, she received £10 per day and usually a Maccies on the way home 😃

That's fair. I hadn't really thought about NMW being lower for under 18s, so 10/hr may be a bit of a stretch.

The tax I was referring to would be on the income - which would presumably be her top marginal rate x 150. Though maybe she has clever ways to avoid that.

Has she been hired and applied for a work permit? If no, then it’s volunteer. My 13 year old has a job, but she had to apply for it, we had to do all the paperwork and get her a work permit, etc. It’s still a valuable experience even if not making money (my dd did her job as a volunteer 2 nights a week for a year before she was hired).

Yes. The older teens who have holiday club classes are not proper dance teachers - the holiday club is different. It is crafts and fun dancing and playing outside and such.

The tax I was referring to would be on the income - which would presumably be her top marginal rate x 150. Though maybe she has clever ways to avoid that.

I don’t know what this means.

If DD were an employee, she would theoretically pay PAYE, but her earnings would be well below the threshold, so none would be due. But that would be a cost to DD, not the dance club.

If the dance club is set up as a business, employee costs (along with hall hire, insurance etc) will reduce profits and thus corporation tax due on those profits will be a little less than if there wasn’t an employee cost for DD.

A lot of people are saying it would be complicated to employ her because she'd need a work permit, but even as a volunteer she'd still need a work permit.

I manage a charity shop and we used to have volunteers under 16 and we always needed to get work permits for them.

Our head office decided to stop taking under 16 volunteers in the charity because of all the extra paperwork involved and the extremely limited hours they were allowed to volunteer.

Sorry!! Meant to start a thread!!

Sounds like an utter scam to me.

You can't hire children to work for free, it's illegal!!!

Loads of kids do things like this without oaym like at stables they'll help with horses and instead of pay they might get a lesson a month or whatever.

Ours helped out at scouts and guides at that age for the younger childrens' camps (5-9 yo) and activities. They were of course scout and guide themselves. They helped out from 12 yo.
Unpaid.
We saw it as gaining life skills and having fun.

By law she cannot do paid work for this amount of time
It needs to be fewer hours or treated as volunteering
They are taking the piss - using your daughter for free

Equally, if she loves it, it’s a boost for her cv

I'm involved in a church holiday club that welcomes about 150 primary aged children for a week each summer - we don't charge but donations are welcome.

We couldn't do what we do without our teenage volunteers, who are there for 4.5 - 5 hours per day, with no more than a toilet break. I think we have about 50 for the week, and several in the weeks beforehand making scenery, etc.

Of course, they don't get paid as they are volunteers, nor do the adult volunteers get paid. I can comment on the ethics of this if the customers are paying handsomely, or in any expectation that it's what you do if you are a member of the dance school.

On the point of ratios, insurance, safeguarding and risk assessment, these all apply. Teenage volunteers add to the ratio headache, so we need to make sure we have at least 4 adults just to cover the teenagers. There are risk assessments for everything (this is my role, and it takes a good couple of weeks to do them properly), and the insurance company require this. The teenagers also have to do safeguarding training, which is another 3 hours of their time. The need for these things do not distinguish between children, adult volunteers or employed people. We also have to apply the Church of England's Safer Recruitment, which involves extra work when the teenager is not one of ours.

We do lots of references throughout the year for these teenagers, but thankfully they are not transactional. Their main reward is that they enjoy doing it, and they know that they are loved and appreciated.

For some families, the parents are really grateful for their teenager to be well occupied for a week, instead of doom scrolling on their phones, costing you extra money, or being a nuisance in town.

Lord above not everything is about money!! This experience will be great on her CV/ Uni application.
Don’t teach your daughter that everything has a price.

Or giving her a great opportunity.

just depends on how you look at it!

Or you could teach her to learn from experiences, grow from helping to teach others etc.

not everything is about being paid to do it, that's also a valuable life lesson.

Depends if it could lead to paid work. My DD did similar at swim club for a year but then when she qualified as a life guard at 16 she was hired straight away as her year of Sat nights helping out was referenced. She’s been there 3 years now and then qualified as swim teacher too off the back of it. It’s been good through college, well paid and flexible for university. It’s not right to be exploited but it’s really good life work experience too. My DDs peers have struggled to get work as they didn’t do this.

You're looking at this the wrong way.

If someone posted on here to say they owned a very successful dance company, were running a holiday club that brought in £1K a day and proposed to use teenager volunteers with no payment in the form of vouchers, free lessons or other incentives people would rightly hand them their arse on a plate.

We couldn’t have paid staff under 16 when I ran the playscheme, even beyond employment laws our insurance simply wouldn’t allow it, but did allow them to be volunteers as long as we had enough adults to cover them as well as the booked in kids.

What we did do was pay any expenses for travel or the likes. I also, as all our volunteers tended to be kids who wanted to be teachers, kept meticulous records for them all and was reference for numerous college courses and university courses as well as jobs (to the point we ended up having a link up with the local college and having folks on childcare courses needing placements).

It was the done thing here, I did it when I was a teen, then other teens done it when I ended up running it. There are far fewer opportunities for kids to volunteer now so for one summer I’d definitely encourage mine to do it.

I think a lot of clubs run with support from some of the older teens. It feels like they get experience and the leaders get an extra pair of hands. Eg at both tennis and ballet when my children were in the youngest classes, they had teens helping out. Full days do feel like a bigger commitment than 1-2 hours a week though).

I think she should be paid. Really poor form to bring in £1000 a day and expect someone to work 18 hours for free.
Perhaps suggest £180 and see what the business owner says.

They're not going to pay a 14yo £10 ph, when minimum wage for a 16yo is under £8

Yes she should get paid 🤷‍♀️

It is exploitation.