To think there should be more funding for under 3yo childcare?

[Rainbowhairdontcare]

I know things are better nowadays, but still find it disheartening that two parents in FT work will only get the "tax-free" childcare help (around 20%). Our take-home pay is around £2k after commuting costs, £1k go to housing and utility bills (CT, energy, and broadband) and then 800 go to childcare even after that 20% off. Leaving us with £200 to feed ourselves, unexpected bills, road tax, insurance, etc..

Our basic UC is 750 +650 of childcare. Our deduction is £1350 so we're still better off with tax free childcare. As this is unsustainable, DH will have to go part time. A bit unfortunate given we don't want to rely on the system, but it's what works out best for our family. We'd both like to work FYT but because childcare is too expensive we can't afford to work as much as we'd like.

Personally I think universal childcare is the answer.

Ah. Is that happening in England too?

What most people don't understand is that in the long run, higher income tax benefits the rest of us a lot more.

Absolutely!

It's not about education, it's about affordability. Government wants us to be as away as possible from benefits, but even if you want to you can't stay away from them.

I disagree with this. You say after paying for your housing and bills that you have £1000 so why didn’t you save a significant amount of this in preparation for when you had children so you have more than £200 per month now? Childcare in this country has been well known to be very expensive for a long time and we have access to effective contraception so there really is no excuse for the vast majority not to plan ahead to make things manageable rather than relying on the government to subsidise what is effectively a choice.

OP, to summarise what most people are saying politely, if you can't afford them or can't afford the lifestyle you want while you have them, then don't have them. Most of us have to just get on with it for a couple of years. It is part of having children.

Perhaps you should look at private schools, prepreps are often around the £500 a month mark and include all clubs and holiday clubs. So cheaper for a lot of people than wrap around care.

And I say that as a family with a household income of less than £26k!

I live in one of the poorest countries in the EU and there is free universal childcare from the age of 1 here. It makes me laugh when I hear people saying the british government cannot provide free childcare to people because "no money".

Don’t have children if you can’t afford them. Or like pp said save up so that you can offset the cost between going back to work and starting school. It’s not rocket science.

The government shouldn’t subsidise our choices. It should support those temporarily who find themselves in dire need due to unforeseen circumstances (job loss, relationship breakdown, death, illness etc)

Free childcare helps the rich return to work and advance their careers. It doesn’t help the poor who’d be returning to a minimum wage job where no advancement is possible, or those who don’t have jobs to return to. Therefore yet again the rich will benefit vastly more than the poor.

I planned ahead by buying my own home. I get no help with housing for example.

I'm not getting any younger thus why were having a baby now.

I'm also seriously considering about getting a PhD loan and just write my PhD while looking after my DS. The truth is that won't benefit my economy in the slightest.

Childcare for a one year old where I live is about £60 full day. My salary is slightly above that. The only reason why my DH is taking the plunge rather than me is because I have substantial more earning potential.

hazeyjane

Sorry I'm not sure about that. My daughter has only been in nursery for 2 weeks so the first I heard of it was on her enrollment day!

bgmama how is it funded? What are the ratios and staff qualifications...and staff pay??

@silveryleaf well ppl need to be accountable for their actions, we don’t get a dog when we can’t afford it and then turn to the state to feed them and pay for doggy day care so why do ppl expect it when they have children!! I stopped at 2 because I CANNOT afford a third!! We took the necessary steps to ensure that we won’t have another one either.

But the Government does subsidise peoples choices and it will continue to do so. If the OP's husband stops working or works part time they will receive higher benefits.

I don't disagree with the sentiment that people should plan and put in place arrangements to manage during the early years but it's too simplistic to say "it's not the government's problem, you should have thought about that before you had kids".

The reality is that the more people that are in work the better from the point of view of the economy. We can spend the money to help them work or we can spend the money to help them stay at home.

just write my PhD while looking after my DS
Off topic but this seriously under estimates the work required. You’d be expected to be on campus working and attending meetings because you’re an employee. And writing up is even worse - towards the end I was writing for 20 hours then having 4hrs sleep and starting again.

Something has gone wrong somewhere when we regard people wanting to have 2 children and be able to continue working and making an economic contribution as some kind of entitled irresponsibility.

Exactly, we can afford DS2 with me as a SAHM, and in a few years I'll go back to work...I do think though it is a shame and a waste of women's education and/or career potential that so many of us end up having a 'bitty' series of jobs rather than managing to hold on to careers if we want to...and I consider my self and my friends facing these decisions to be at the priviledged/lucky end of the scale.

I would be happy to pay more tax to see more funding go towards early years. It is a critical time of development. Some 3 year olds will never catch-up because of the hand they’ve been dealt early on. You’re now seeing nurseries shutting in the more deprived areas because the 30 hours isn’t sustainable. That isn’t right.

But the reality is that if couples who would otherwise work more hours choose to do less purely for financial reasons, it does have an impact on the rest of us.

I agree with this. It may be a tangential point, but we’re high earners. I’m dismayed at the quality of care I’ve witnessed at most nurseries I’ve visited, and that’s before you factor in that they are extortionate. It simply needs to be a higher priority for the government for any change to happen. Likelihood? Tending towards zero.

(Ie I’m willing and able to pay more for better care, but it doesn’t exist!)

It is supposed to help those children and families. It is a good thing.
Of course it is, but it's a good thing because it's accepted those families aren't able to give them the same opportunities etc. Maybe. It feels more like a personal criticism when you're receiving it like I did with DS and people are sitting there thinking it's for my benefit and I must not be bothered to have him full time.

silveryleaf well ppl need to be accountable for their actions, we don’t get a dog when we can’t afford it and then turn to the state to feed them and pay for doggy day care so why do ppl expect it when they have children!! I stopped at 2 because I CANNOT afford a third!! We took the necessary steps to ensure that we won’t have another one either.

What about the government being accountable for actually spending the taxes we pay on the people? Actually investing in public services instead of gearing economic systems up in order to line their own pockets and offshore bank accounts? What about the children, should they be held to account for being born?

As I said, I stopped up one. But I am relatively privileged and educated. Not everyone has had my advantages in life. Some have children very young simply because they have grown up in a precarious and vulnerable situation.

Rainbow that is going to be haaaard, I'm doing an MSc atm with a toddler plus a difficult pregnancy and it's required so many extensions/re-sits and I'm probably going to have to suspend and submit my dissertation next year with a tiny baby hysterical laughter

Sorry I meant to add good luck Rainbow I have 2 friends doing PhDs plus DC atm and I really admire them.

@silverchime not with the university I've talked to. My tutor is happy for me to attend a couple of weeks twice a year. My exH was advisor for someone in Israel and another guy in Brazil. It's not that unheard of. My sister did hers while living part time in Zurich and her university is in Berlin. Said exH also managed to write it while working FT (although it took him way too long).

I felt similarly EssentialHummus. The nurseries were ok but we had a choice not to use them until we felt our DC would really benefit and took it. Fairly middle earners in our case but niche professional skills with the option to work part time and live cheaply. I would make the same decisions again, but would not be naive enough to think there were no outward ripples flowing from it.

Wrt planning, yes, do it, but equally don't overestimate how helpful it might be. The childcare sector is very much in flux and it only takes quite small changes to make a huge difference to people.

The nursery where my aunt worked upped their prices by £2 an hour a couple of years back. That will have entirely fucked some people's plans and calculations. And providers go bust all the time, as this one later did.

You have a look around before ttc, work out you can afford it, your baby is born perhaps a year or 18 months later and you're back at work say 10 months after that, with about 2 years 4 months before any free hours kick in. Of course there's ample scope for significant change in that several year period.

I think what our nursery does is really clever, but I live in an expensive area so it wouldn't work everywhere.

It offers the free hours (well 21 spread across the year) but also offers optional extras to the older kids that some parents choose to pay for (forest school, and tennis)...they do lots of small group work across different rooms at different times plus local outings so as far as I know DC don't feel left out if different groups are doing different things...eg DS doesn't do forest school regularly but goes on walks to the local park and is equally happy.