Hmm!!

[Laura25o6]

So my kids do 2.5 days at nursery and there’s a letter in their tray saying I have to pay for them to take their own dinner. I make packed lunches for two kids. £2 per day

I have already payed for the food to begin with, why should I pay the nursery for it to be eaten? I just don’t get it.

Can someone explain this to me please xx

Early years pupil premium money

Why no child benefit, or fostering allowance if still in care?

@Missingstreetlife

We fostered temporarily until the AMD was given to start adoption proceedings, fostering allowance stopped and we now fund them. No CB yet until we have Adoption order granted, when we are their legal guardians as at the moment we share responsibility with the local authorities x

It sounds like the actual sessions are 8.45-11.45 and 12.15-3.15 which are the free sessions linked by a lunch club at a cost of £1 which is legal and quite common for a pre-school nursery. Our local one is similar but slightly more expensive

You are getting 15 hours free care but they are at nursery for 16 hours so you are being asked to pay for the extra hour that they are there at lunch time, only way to change this is to change to 5 mornings or 5 afternoons so that they are not there for lunch! (unless as the poster above said about using there pupil premium money on it)

@BaronessEllaSaturday

"It sounds like the actual sessions are 8.45-11.45 and 12.15-3.15 which are the free sessions linked by a lunch club at a cost of £1 which is legal and quite common for a pre-school nursery."

My understanding (from LA) is that it isn't legal. They mentioned having threatened enforcement action over it and subsequently nurseries removing the policy, but did not mention court action. If I'm wrong, I'd be interested in a link that said otherwise as it must be a common issue people face.

@Laura25o6 Apologies for the acronym. Your child should get about £300 in funding from age 3.

It is legal as long as it is a separate session which parents are not obliged to use. Or local lea nursery does 5 sessions a day, a breakfast club, a lunch club and an after school club plus the morning and afternoon pre-school session. Only the pre-school sessions are covered under the 15 hours any others you book are payable separately.

It is a LA educational facility not a childcare one and it does fixed session times, you don't have the option to pick your own start and finish times for the actual pre-school sessions but you do for the wrap around care.

A lot of nurseries are charging for extras that they didn't use to as putting it bluntly the government scheme us making some go out of business as the rate the government pay is not enough to pay for costs. This will only get worse as the scheme expands. You need to clarify exactly what you are paying for at the nursery however I think situations like this will become the norm so these businesses can stay afloat.

Think it’s been sorted now, there’s a half an half an hour that isn’t funded by the free hour system so hubs and I are guessing that’s what the payment for kids taking packed lunches is. X