Childcare and benefits

[Princess2000]

Hi,

Trying to work out financial assessment wow childcare is expensive! We've asked the SW about potential benefits we could claim to help with childcare but they don't know.

We are trying to work out how many hours to work verses the cost of childcare. The calculators ask for child ages etc and obviously we don't have them yet, we both work and never claimed a benefit before so we're a bit lost, any advice out there?

Is everyone entitled to the 30 hours free childcare for 3 year olds?
Are there any others to be claimed?

Thanks

Would love some help with this too (sorry I can't help!). Thinking about phoning HMRC because I'm self-employed and then trying to find someone who understands about the benefit system. Because I must be entitled to some, but no idea how to go about it!

Hi, not an expert (no kids yet but just been matched!) but I'm pretty sure that looked after children (even if they've been adopted) get the free 15 hours childcare from age 2 (then 30 aged 3):

www.gov.uk/help-with-childcare-costs/free-childcare-2-year-olds

Also Child Benefit unless one of you is on over £50k then there are tax complications:

www.gov.uk/child-benefit/eligibility

You may also be entitled to child and/or working tax credits, or disability benefits if the child has an illness or disability (depending on how it effects them). The entitled to calculator is good but you do need to know children's ages however we played around with it just to get an idea:

www.entitledto.co.uk

Hope this helps it is a bit of a minefield!

That's great thank you very much 👍

The 15 hrs at 2 is really helpful. This is the term time amount, so if you run it over the whole year it's about 11 hours.

You are entitled to apply for means tested adoption allowance through the LA. It's rare that SW tell you that ALL adopters are entitled to this (as opposed to specific allowances for hard to place kids).

The criteria for getting it are as opaque as mud, but if you are not fairly comfortable then once placed I would apply and see how it goes.

All LAC get 15hrs from the term after they turn 2. We just had to fight for the 30hrs from 3 though so I'm not sure what the criteria is.

Child benefit & tax credits are easy enough to apply for.

As self-employed we had no adoption leave pay & no alternative support. We just had to try to split child care & work between us.

We pushed and pushed for the application form for adoption allowance and were simply told they have no budget for it anymore. Until we took our third child & now they're letting us apply for support but I can only assume it won't be much. It's mean tested every year though I don't know what the thresholds are & trying to find out any info is like getting blood out of a stone.

If you do find out anymore about support for the self employed please do come back & share!

Good luck

Tax free childcare is useful for the self employed. With DD we used vouchers, but only I could get them as DH is self employed. Tax free childcare is much better for us.
If our situation helps at all, we have a joint income of just over 50k and we're not entitled to any means tested benefits. DD is at school, DS is with a childminder 32 hours per week during term time only.
We get:
Child benefit £137 per month (2 DC)
Tax free childcare (our childcare costs work out about £500 per month, tax free childcare brings it down to £400)
15 hours free for DS kicks in from April 1st which will bring costs down to £200 per month.

It's still expensive but there's a fair bit of help out there.