To Not Want To Pay For Nursery Food If Ill

[PopACapInMyAssPlease]

My DD attends her free 15 hours a week.
Her nursery charges £5 a day for food, which means snacks, a cooked lunch and dinner (wrap or spaghetti on toast).
It was ok at first as I thought it was subsidising her care etc, but I'm more cash-strapped now and so feeling the £40 a month cost.

DD was off ill 3 days last month and I begrudge paying for food she didn't eat. E-mailed the nursery and they say i have to pay as her food was ordered 2 weeks in advance.
I get that the cooked lunch may be ordered that far in advance, but not the tea, which is generally spaghetti on toast or a wrap.

I get paying for a day (if i did) if they are ill, but food?

AIBU as i agreed to it in the first place or what?
I really didn't want to change nursery, but I'm not happy.
Packed lunches aren't an option.

realise that the funded 2 year old places are for people on a VERY low income and the places were set up for underprivileged children to have access to early socialisation and education.
Where does it say the child is 2?
There are very different rules for FEET funded children and universal funded children?

WakeUpFromYourDreamAndScream
Thank you.

Cranky Yes my DD is 2 and there on her free funded 15 hours.

Cranky Yes my DD is 2 and there on her free funded 15 hours.
Have they applied for deprivation funding for you dd?

We apply for deperivation funding and use it to cover lunch costs, if they have applied you can ask them what they are using the funding for.
Also the feet funding hours are set slightly hours to help cover extras like lunch

Higher

Ok Cranky17, I'll e-mail them that question. Thanks.
Will it make a difference though? I'm off to Google deprevation funding as I've never heard of it.

Also known as pupil premium.

It might be called pupil premium depends on area
www.early-education.org.uk/eypp-and-eypdg-support

If you meet the criteria they can apply with you and you can use that to help cover extra which meet your dd needs so lunch would be a good one to support her

Why would you put spaghetti on a toast?

That’s the real question.

Seriously, this is just carbohydrates. And then they ask what causes children’s obesity epidemic in Britain.

Give you local authority early years a ring they will be able to help and are there to help

From what I've read, the premium is paid when they are 3.
So when DD is 3 (start of March), then the nursery can apply for that and i can ask what they are spending it on? They are currently doing up the garden to make a forest school thing, so i suspect any extra money will.be spent on that.

I'd love for my "voluntary" (but that actually mean compulsory) contribution to just be £5 a day...at dad's nursery it's £15 a day....still a lot cheaper than the £56 a day I was paying before her funding kicked in

From what I've read, the premium is paid when they are 3. in my LA, children who are feet Funded are paid at a higher rate than the universal in recognition that they may not be able to afford extra but shouldn’t miss out. So yours maybe the same.
The money for pupil premium should be spent directly on the children who need it, however not exclusively, but should benefit directly, so an example would be we used to supply breakfast for all using the premium because the children who were entitied to the premium struggled to have breakfast at home. So I’m not sure a forest garden would meet the criteria tbh.

Does that makes sense, what I mean was all children were offered breakfast using
The money but it directly helped the premium children.

Totally, making sense!
Had a huge explore and saw what you were saying in Surrey etc, but it turns out that in my LA, the current rate for two year olds (£5+/hour) is based on a straight in/out basis to all providers.

They will provide funding for Free School Meals for eligible 3 and 4 year olds though.
So it looks like i will only have to wait until after Easter to get some help.