To be appalled by nursery funding for children living in poverty

[Crunchyapplez]

Re. The Times today:

If you work for less than 16 hours a week on the living wage (ie your children are being raised in poverty), then you get only 15 hours of free nursery hours.

If you are a 3 or 4 year old, living in poverty and on a child protection plan (when a child is regarded as suffering or likely to suffer significant harm), then you are STILL not eligible for more than 15 hours of funded nursery a week - even when it is formally recognised that your home is not always a safe place.

BUT a child whose parents earn as much as £200000 a year is eligible for 30 hours a week, fully funded by the government.

Please vote:
YABU: I find this an acceptable funding structure
YANBU: I find this unacceptable

Its childcare though? Why do you need if if you aren't working? 15 hours early education is the amount the government thinks is necessary/beneficial to children in terms of development/educational outcomes. The additional hours provided to parents who both work reflects the need for longer childcare to enable them to work and to match school hours, thus slotting in better with other wraparound care that working parents use.

Rules here

www.gov.uk/30-hours-free-childcare

The article you read must have misrepresented it. High earners are excluded.

fully funded by the government.

It is not fully funded by the government. Where I live nursery places cost at least £7/h but the government/council only pay £4.50 to providers so they have to recoup the shortfall in other ways or go bust.

Fuckery if either parent earns over £100k you only get 15h but both earning £99.9k would get 30h.

You can’t build a system around outliers (like your child protection example). Social services do have mechanisms over and above standard funding mechanisms.

It’s about different purposes. The 15 free hours are DfE’s attempt to ensure children receive early education. Disadvantaged 2 years olds are entitled too.

The additional 15 hours is about supporting families to work.

Whether the system works effectively is a different question to what it’s intentions are.

I think the issue is confusion over the extended hours. Those are to promote people working. 15h/week is enough in terms of early years education.

What do you need childcare for if you're not employed? Other forms of support for the kids, sure. But childcare specifically when you have one or two adults at home all the time...? Seems dumb

I think YABU

If you are working less than 16 hours a week then 15 hours free preschool seems fine. Thatscan amount that benefits the child and childcare is not necessary.

Regarding children in unsafe homes, I dont think the answer to that is necessarily just more preschool. I agree action needs to be taken and money spent, and in some cases more childcare may be a good thing. But it's not really addressing the root of the problem.

I would like to see more free childcare provided for children with disabilities, esp wrap around care and holiday care.

The average family taking advantage of the 30 hours aren’t going to be the £200k+ example you have used. They’ll be like my DH and I who both earn average UK salaries and where the funding is the difference between being able to work FT or not.

Children on protection plans undoubtedly do need further support but I think that’s a separate issue to regular childcare funded hours.

Over 100k earners aren’t eligible for 30hrs!!!

My family income is no where near 200k but we would have been eligible for the 30 hours.

Would rather have had 15 hours from age 2 but not eligible for that.

I think 15 hours a week is enough especially if you aren't working, and they get it from a year earlier.

I think the issue with these sort of comparisons is that youve gone from one extreme to the other. The majority of people with two working parents are barely managing to cover the cost of full time childcare, and the 30 free hours are a huge help. my nursery is £1450 a month for full time.

If you want to get riled up about the way the funding works then I’d personally be more annoyed that you can continue to claim the hours and put them towards private school fees until the child turns 5.

Who needs more childcare than that if they don’t work? They could care for their children, what else have they got to do?!

Childcare isn’t charity. The funding for 2 year olds allows disadvantaged children to access nursery, while other parents (who may work but just miss the threshold) have to pay for their own childcare. Nursery can’t make up for a child living in poverty, and if they offered FT nursery places to these children it would be even less incentive for the parents to work and fund their own childcare!

Working 30 hours a week doesn’t mean a family can afford childcare; without that funding a lot of women would be unable to re-enter the workforce full time (or at all). People often pay hundreds a month in childcare and use the 30 free hours to top it up to full time.

More needs to be done to tackle poverty, neglect and children being raised in unsuitable housing, but more free nursery hours won’t solve anything.

The way my nursery does the funding means that I still have to pay 33 quid a day even though he only attends 20 hours a week and we are eligible for 30 hours funding. So it's not really 'free' childcare.....

Why would you need your child to be in for 30 hours if you are only working 16 and if you are so poor you are living in poverty why wouldn't you look for a job with more hours meaning you can also get more hours of childcare and more money?

Why do you think people should get free childcare when not working?

I agree with the op. Children’s access to early year’s education should be universal just like throughout the rest of their education and not dependent on their parent’s working patterns.

It’s about the children not the parents.

Also I agree with the point made by a pp that it should not be possible to fund private school fees using funded childcare places.

Social care are able to fund childcare if necessary in these cases , I work in this area

Sorry my reference was to child protection cases

Are you talking about school?
Yes, education should be free for all children, regardless of how rich their parents are.

I agree too that early years education should be universal.

For everyone querying why "childcare" is needed if you're not working, the 15hrs funding is not childcare, it is early years education. Children from specific groups - low income families, children with disabilities and/or SEN, and looked after children - are more likely to start school developmentally and educationally behind their peers and that gap widens. Studies show that early intervention improves outcomes which is why the 15hrs funding exists. Access to 30hrs would improve outcomes even further and I think you would need to be a special kind of selfish to begrudge a child access to opportunities that could improve their long term attainment.