To charge £6/hour for childminding in Tunbridge Wells

[pingu2209]

For those of you in the Tunbridge Wells area/villages around. Would you pay £6/hour for childminding?

This would be between 8-6.

Any time outside these hours would be time and a half, based on half hourly increments.

wow im definitely going to move ;) i currently charge between £3 - £4 /hr and £5/hr for unsociable hours

I pay £8 an hour in an area of London which has a chronic shortage of nursery and childminder places, sigh. Nannies round here won't take less than £10 an hour and that would only get you someone fairly inexperienced, so I prefer my CM who is very experienced and lovely and has sweet children of her own who my DD gets on with.

The best bit is that it is totally up to us if we use her in the school hols, she just invoices us for the hours that we need. So, I can put DD in for the whole of a half term if I need to but I don't have to pay anything over the long summer holiday if we don't need the childcare. I found that most CM in my area charged a holding fee over the summer to keep the place open even if you weren't sending your DC. She is also very flexible on hours and doesn't charge extra for 'antisocial' hours. But £8 an hour is still expensive!

I charge a flat rate of £30 (open from 8 - 6) per day for preschoolers so that works out at £3 per hour and I am in West Wales.

£282.63 for nursery care 7:30am to 6:30pm, 5 days a week, at a place really close to the train station (so handy for commuters) for a 6 month old. That works out to about £5.14/hour.

I just moved from Tunbridge Wells.

Not all of it is a wealthy as Right Move would have you believe, I think it's a bit much.

Would anyone else pay £6 per hour - if you live in Tunbridge Wells - surrounding villages. Not Tonbridge/West Malling as this is a very different area to the one I live in.

Pingu tell me to mind my own business if you like, but what is the full compliment of dc's are you hoping to acquire and how much are you hoping to earn?

That is an okay question Monty. I guess I would like to take on 3 children at a minimum of 25 hours a week each, which would equate to about £400/week. I would have expenses though and tax to pay out of that income.

However, I know it doesn't always work out like that! I may end up with 1 child at 40 hours and 4 other children at 20 hours each - or none at all!!!!

I'm really looking forward to building a plan of learning and experiences for children. When my youngest was at nursery I was invited in at the end of each term to view her work, I was presented with a booklet of information at the end of each year. I want to do all that with my mindees.

Not sure if this is of any help but I pay £6 per hour (includes meals) for my childminder near Dorking, Surrey. When looking for a childminder I was quoted anywhere between £5.25-£6 per hour). Might be wrong but imagine Tunbridge Wells demographic to be similar to this area of Surrey (people mainly commuting into London for work)? I am happy to pay this because the childminder could do the days I needed. Good nurseries here are over subscribed (waiting lists) and can be difficult to get the exact days/times you need.

Balloon Yes, she was offering meals as an extra. Perhaps that's what the problem was. Some of the mums didn't want children fed as they would prefer to eat as a family, say, whereas some wanted to not bother. She basically charged £3.50 per hour for child minding plus an extra £1.00 per meal if the children were wanting a cooked tea. I hadn't realised that this was likely to be why she was told if she wanted to continue doing this then her kitchen worktops, etc would all need to be replaced by stainless steel, separate fridges, etc as a restaurant kitchen would need. I know she already had a Food Hygiene certificate, so I think this must have been the reason.

I think the childminder fees are extortionate. I am surprised that anyone can afford it.

I suppose it depends what the market can stand. I imagine it would be cheaper to employ a nanny if you have more than one child.

Reallytired, I understand what it is like to pay childcare costs and 10-15 years ago childminders were the cheap alternative because they were not expected to do much with the children. Certainly they didn't have to plan and observe and take notes for the Early Years Foundation Stage, let alone all the health and safety form filling and the other red tape.

Childminders were mums at home who looked after one or two children at a very low cost. However, they didn't have to do much. They could very easily plonk the child infront of the TV, take them shopping etc.

Now childminders have been asked to do so much more and offer so much more for children. Perhaps they should have been doing this anyway, but many didn't.

The ones that didn't have left the industry. The ones that did now expect to be paid better for their services. This has led to a massive rise in the 'cheap' childcare alternative of a childminder.

The care given by a childminder is undoubtedly better and parents can be assured of a good learning environment as well as a family home environment. However, the end result is that the costs are higher. In my area childminder costs have risen by 40% over the past 5-7 years.

extortionate?

it takes 10 seconds for the man who cleans the bins out after they have been emptied to spray inside them and tip the water out. he charges £1 a time. that's £6 a minute- to clean a bin. that is £360 an hour- to clean a bin.

window cleaner here charges £8 to do 10 minutes work. thats £48 an hour.

and people complain about paying £6 an hour for looking after your child? i dont know what planet people live on where they want to pay as little as possible for the extremely important job that a childminder does. they expect their childcare provider to be totally up to date with all training and regulations, provide a completely safe environment, feed healthy meals, provide stimulating activites and socialise their children, keep all paperwork up to date, undergo regular inspections and provide detailed updates on how your child's day went all for peanuts. really dont understand that mindset. how far down your priority list is your child's wellbeing that begrudge paying less than NMW for their care?

"The care given by a childminder is undoubtedly better and parents can be assured of a good learning environment as well as a family home environment. However, the end result is that the costs are higher. In my area childminder costs have risen by 40% over the past 5-7 years. "

I have had one outstanding childminder who was fab and one really awful childminder. However many parents do prefer nurseries as they accept early years funding.

The outstanding childminder did not have to bother with the EYFS, but the rubbish childminder did have to comply with the early years foundaton stage. In fact I believe that the EYFS is not suitable for a home enviroment and puts off many excellent childminders. I believe the best way to improve quality is to have a bit of healthy competition.

I think the child national childminding association should be more involved with regulating and assessing the quality of childminders instead of OFSTED. Childminders should be assessed differently to nurseries as they offer a different style of care. There has to be a balance between regulation stifling childminders and protecting children.

some childminders accept early years funding.

OMG I'm in the south and CM fees here are around half that!

booyhoo
My kid is in childcare for 48hrs a month
My window cleaner does about an hour for me a month if that!!

I don't earn for all the hours DCs are in childcare because I have to get from and to there after drop off/before pick up

It is strange sitting on the other side of the fence. When I paid for my own children's care I thought it was expensive. That was when I paid £5 per hour.

However, now when I look at the time I will need to plan and observe and form fill and clean and set up etc. I have to question how much money I am prepared to do it for!

I now want to earn a minimum of £400 per week.

Booyhoo most childminders look after 3 children during school hours and another three after school. They are being paid £6 an hour by several families. It is sharing the costs with a family. £18 an hour is not the national minimum wage. I accept that childminders have costs, but I am sure they get in excess of £10 an hour after expenses. Childminders are often able to claim expenses that they would have if they weren't childminding like heating or car expenses and not having to pay anyone to look after their kids.

Our after school club charges £6 or £8 if you want your child to be given a meal. It has a range of activites and the children don't get plonked in front of the TV like my son experienced with the crap childminder. There are often 40 children with 5 members of staff. The staff are badly paid, but they do get more than NMW.

Its economics. A baby can be looked after for a day for £45 in a nursery in my town. I know the nursery owner has an excellent life style so certainly makes a profit at her nursery.

I wouldn't look after a kid for less than £25 an hour.

I want to earn £400 a week too! but I don't (and I do 4 quite long days a week including antisocial hours - which is why I only need 48hrs a month childcare as a lot of my hours are covered by DH.. and I still couldn't afford you! )

so go for it if you are targetting only part of the community, but be aware you won't be an option at all for a lot of people, it's not about being "willing" to pay £6/hr, its just plain not being able to consider it at all

seems reasonable

bear in mind for people with 2 kids some flex might be needed

but for parents with one child, seems fine

crazycard, I think you should charge more

I think it's reasonable. I pay £6.50ph in London. Tbh, the cost was less important than knowing I had a caring, competent childminder who dd loves. There are cheaper ones in my area but that's not relevant to me, its all about getting the right cm. If you're good, people will pay it.

Seems a bit harsh to charge more for before 8am though - I've never known a cm to do that,mine certainly doesn't.

I also think £6 per hour is very expensive. Especially if the childminder is looking after more than one child. People must have next to nothing left from their salary unless they are very high earners.

REallytired, it depends upon what you want for your child. I personally used nurseries because I was concerned that if the childminder was ill, that my childcare would break down. That was very important to me at the time.

However, it meant my sons were in an institutionalised setting from a young age. It was light and brightly coloured and there were lots of activities, but it was still not a home from home environment.

Additionally, the nursery staff had a high turnover and were quite young, most were in the late teens and very early 20s. They were forever changing their staff and the young girls would chat as much as they would play with the children. As soon as my sons had got used to a member of staff, then they would leave.

At least with a childminder the child would have the same person looking after them.

The difficulty in my area is that the before and after school groups don't feed a proper home cooked 2 course meal and do not offer a calm quiet area for reading or homework. For a 4, 5 or 6 year old, being picked up at 6ish is a long day. The mum then has to go home and give them dinner and then do their reading with them. A childminder would feed them a proper dinner and could do the 10 mins daily reading that a child in infants requires. This would take a lot of pressure off working parents.

An after school club picks up straight after school. A child can not do the after school activities such as Judo or Football etc. A childminder can pick up at 4 or 4.30 so that the child can do those clubs.

Childminders do not plonk their mindees infront of the TV. That is a very old stereotype. For under 5s they have to offer a wide range of toys and activities that help meet the Early Years Foundation Stage. For over 5s but under 8s a childminder may offer a range of activities, from TV to board games to Wii etc. But what exactly do you think the after school clubs offer the 5-8 year olds?! At least the childminder has fewer children so the child gets a longer turn!

There are pros and cons to both.

Well okay, not everyone in TW is minted. But I do enjoy looking at the property as I grew up there in a council flat.

Not very helpful to the thread, sorry!