To be delighted with thirty free hours child care!!!

[Lookingforabetteryear]

I have a three year old , I'm a single mum and work full time . On average I pay £700 pm for nursery fees . From sept I'll be paying £285!!! Bloody wonderful move in childcare policy. Am I missing something with this ?! Seems too good to be true.

One minds children in loco parentis whilst the other prepares children for school through education and play

As a childminder I can assure you there is more to it than simply minding in loco parentis. I also have to prepare children for school thriugh education and play (and Ofsted check that I'm doing this) by delivering the EYFS portion of the National Curriculum, the activities I do with the children are all planned around early year learning goals.

Never

Of course and I should have said this
It's just that pre school education should be available whatever the parents income.
I don't think nursery is needed for a sahp, unless there are benefits to the child of course.
However, imo pre school education is important and will hugely benefit the child, in most cases

I volunteer at ds nursery, the funding shortfall is around £2 per child per hour, it's not 'fully funded' by the government, we have to fundraise just to pay staff salaries, and with overheads gong up (staff being guaranteed living wage and pensions) and the level of government funding to nurseries frozen until (i think) 2020, there will be a lot of nurseries close or at best many excellent nurseries will reduce the number of staff down to bare minimum and they will no longer be as 'outstanding' as they once were. I imagine larger more commercial nurseries are able to top up by charging for lunches, and setting session times e.g. You have to use your funded hours for ten hours a day, but the day session is £11 and guess what, that final hour costs a small fortune. It's great if it helps people out with childcare, but I can't see it working for nurseries in the medium of long term?

So can you not use whatever the govt give the nursery to subsidise you? I'm in Scotland and this is exactly what my nursery do. I think it's 15 free hours here. I pay every month and then every quarter I get a cheque to refund me £200 ish quid which is the council money divided amongst all the kids.

PrincessLeia80
Why aren't you claiming for help with childcare fees from Student Finance?

I found a fab nursery for my 2yr old's 15 free hours and they said they did it. Great. Until they said "But we charge £900 PER TERM on top of that as we feel we provide a better service (said in fancier terms) than what the government gives funding for" I was so upset. And angry. £900 a term? When it's meant to be free or close to free? Insane.

I found a fab nursery for my 2yr old's 15 free hours and they said they did it. Great. Until they said "But we charge £900 PER TERM on top of that as we feel we provide a better service (said in fancier terms) than what the government gives funding for" I was so upset. And angry. £900 a term? When it's meant to be free or close to free? Insane.

Lesley you don't have to pay 6k and send her a nursery if you're a SAHM though.

Use your 15 hours and send DC to a preschool.

Ours is offering it but has increased the hourly rate and food costs for those not getting the funded hours. Will still need to pay for food but overall we will be getting a saving.

Fruitcocktail, ideally yes, but that depends if there are enough preschool places available locally. The preschools where I am both have long waiting lists and not all eligible children will get in by a long way.

My children are grown up now, so personally we never benefited from any free childcare. When we had our dc1, maternity leave was much shorter so we paid full childcare from when she was 12 weeks old til when she started school at almost 5 years. We also had 2 children overlapping in nursery for a while. It nearly crippled us financially. It was very tough, wanting to retain our careers (and also wanting our children to have the benefits of good quality nursery, which is so much more than just in loco parentis.) I'm all in favour of anything which helps to ease that burden for working parents. I realise the system isn't perfect, but there aren't unlimited pots of money and I'm sure the system as it is, is preferable to a return to everyone just paying full rates until their child goes to school

I'm delighted by it too. I'm going from having to pay £175 a week for full time childminder, to £70 a week during term time. I'll feel so much better off, for the first time since going back to work 2.5 years ago.

So making more people eligible, I.e. SAHPs, is not going to make the situation more manageable. The 30 hours is there to help working parents.

Hundreds of childcare providers are closing at the moment
After a couple of years of underfunding on the 20 hours, there will probably be even more closed
It's not good news for everyone

The private nursery ds has his 15 hours a week at is encouraging parents to register for the 30 hours! And local childminders are promoting it on their fb pages. So I assume in some aread the funding to childcare providers is a good enough incentive to offer it and promote it to parents.

Great for parents, not so great for local childminders!

They only offer the 30 hours during term time surely. You will still have to pay out top rate for the 3 months of the year that it is the full price.

Fruitcocktail, totally agree with you there. Unfortunately there is a drastic shortage of childcare in many areas but the problem is it is exacerbated by a poorly funded 30 hours policy.

Please watch the champagne nurseries video previously posted and then see whether you think it's so great.

Wasn't the point made by Lesley this Instead of accepting 20-25 morning & afternoon children they are only accepting 20 children 9-3. That's atleast 40 places lost in an area with only 3 council nurseries. Both nurseries have also stopped accepting 2 year olds.

There are fewer spaces because they are offering "full day" places to one child rather than half day sessions to two.

Anyway, it's not "free", they've taken the money from elsewhere to fund this and I suspect it could have been better spent elsewhere really.

The 'catch' is that when your child gets to school you realis how underfunded the schools are.

Not as underfunded as nurseries

I haven't noticed a large training programme to recruit the number of early years practitioners needed to staff this and in most parts of the country there are waiting lists to get children into early education so each child getting 30 hours could mean another child not being able to get their 15 hours. I'm sure it isn't quite as stark as there are there will be a little bit of capacity but not a huge amount.

I pay over 1000 a month for 4 days a week split between private nursery and childminder. CM does not offer free hours nursery offers 15. Still waiting to hear if they will do 30 hours. If so i will increase to nursery 4 days amd drop CM. Local council nurseries do not offer full days and i cant get wrap around care.

I currently work at a loss so any reduction in childcare is welcome. since our tax credits have dropped 180 pounds a month we are struggling.