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

In your post you said that it irks you paying fir the funding for people who should just parent better. Given that disabled children qualify for the funding, I'd like to know how you propose this is fixed by parenting better? Ditto children in foster care who also qualify, and children with special education needs, and children living in poverty. How would parenting better resolve these?

That will be because one of them earns over £100k. If one earns £110k and the other earns £40k they aren't eligible. If they each earned £75k, they would be.

Doesn't seem especially fair to me but that is how it works.

@89redballoons

That will be because one of them earns over £100k. If one earns £110k and the other earns £40k they aren't eligible. If they each earned £75k, they would be.

Doesn't seem especially fair to me but that is how it works.

Was supposed to be a response to @Soontobe60

@OfstedOffred

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.

This.

Yabu
I have not read the linked times article but the framing sounds highly mis informed.

@Hospedia completely agree with all your points made above.
Early Years Education should be state owned and universally free for all children aged over 2 in my opinion regardless of parental income.
But as that will probably never happen, especially with a Tory Government supremely unconcerned with levelling the playing field for all ( in fact actively entrenching inequality) at least 2 year olds from the most deprived backgrounds, with the 30 hours free care have a chance of entering reception class prepared for school and not already behind their peers, a gap which usually doesn't close throughout their time at school and thus impacts them for life. For life!
Early Years Education is not just 'childcare' it's vitally important in improving children who are born into adversity's life chances.

The one that upset me is that I have two DC with additional needs and EHCPs and am a single parent.

As a single parent carer you aren't eligible for the 30 hours. In a two adult household if one is a carer and the other employed then they are.

Doesn't strike me as hugely fair.

4.2 million children in poverty in the UK and it's only going to get worse. Energy price hikes, food price inflation, the rise and rise of food banks, cuts to social services, no NHS dentists, benefit reduction (the end of the uplift) and sanctions and the 2 child limit for benefits, the lack of building and investing in social housing and actually affordable housing generally, very little access to mental health support for kids or parents, it's a shit show
People don't need extra nursery so their kids are warm and fed for a few more hours a week. We need systemic change across the board that lasts for multiple generations. Anything less is just sticking a plaster on a gaping wound and hoping for the best.

But a good start would be doing away with the worn out trope about the deserving and undeserving poor, the strikers and shirkers, the workers and scroungers. Sure there are a million reasons people are poor, but the primary one is always lack of all money/resources. We shouldn't need different campaigns for food poverty, fuel poverty, period poverty, bed poverty, etc. Chances are if you can't afford to heat your home or fill your belly, you're going to struggle to afford Sanpro and furniture too.

Funded hours are to enable parents to go to work. More freebies are hardly an incentive to stop folk having children they can't afford.

I voted you are not being unreasonable but I am not sure, its been a long time since I looked at the free childcare funding.

my son has unfortunately grown up under the tory government and when I looked for my free space for him could not find anywhere local that had any free spaces, also back then the "upto" didnt mean you you would get the full 16 hours it was based on demand in the area for the free places, the most I got offered was 2 hours a week from a place 1 and a half miles away so I didnt bother.

it was all just a PR thing to sound good to tory voters who know nothing , not sure if thats still the case but I expect it is.

But a good start would be doing away with the worn out trope about the deserving and undeserving poor, the strikers and shirkers, the workers and scroungers. Sure there are a million reasons people are poor, but the primary one is always lack of all money/resources

👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

We should be giving people a hand up, not pushing them down and that should especially be the case with children who have no say or control over the decisions being made in the household.

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.

Its not education.

15 hours of it is education because there's a benefit to the child of receiving that many hours in a good quality setting.

Long hours in childcare can actually have less benefit. For children with working parents the government funds it to provide childcare for the parents benefit - it's a reflection of the fact that in reality we need affordable childcare to allow parents to earn enough to stay afloat. The government knows that women who take years and years out of work because they can't afford childcare struggle to eventually get back to employment so they are trying to help parents remain in the workforce and retain skills etc.

@Hospedia

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.

Thats just an assumption. 15 free hours was to bring all kids up to a minimum. More hours might make them prepared ‘above’ the minimum s But No matter how much ‘early childhood dev’ is given kids will fall behind in school if parents do nothing at home.

I think 2 x £99,999 earners is a bit of a red herring here, for how common that's going to be. The important point is that DC on child protection plans are often not entitled to the free hours, and yes that absolutely seems like a bad idea. These are DC who would likely benefit more from greater access to nursery. That argument is sufficient in itself.

@NorthSouthcatlady

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

Look for work in accordance with your decoration with the job centre,

My daughter couldn't start preschool until she received her funded hours at 3 years and 3 months because I work so she wasn't entitled to 2 year old funding and I couldn't afford to send her. That doesn't seem fair to me either. So then being able to do the 30 hours allows children like mine to catch up on the year they missed out on due to having a mother that works!

The 2 year funding isn’t for the parents to have a break while they’re not working. It’s free education for children from disadvantaged backgrounds to help close the gap.
I understand your frustration as your dd missed out, but I don’t think it’s right to begrudge those 2 year places for children who will benefit so much from them.

When my DS was 2, he got the funding because of his disability and was nothing to do with my work status. The way his speech came along after he started was truly amazing.
A few years later, after becoming a newly single parent, my DD then qualified for the 2 year funding. This time it was because of my work status. She thrived more than she would have done if she didn’t go.

Most of us are just trying to do the best for our children. If taking advantage of free education helps children then I’m all for it.

Early Years Education should be state owned and universally free for all children aged over 2

It is. 15 hours a week is the amount of education 2,3,4 year olds benefit from. They don't actually need more than this. They also benefit from time at home with family.

The funding is for childcare. So if you are working less than 15 hours then you don't need childcare for more than that. If a home is not safe for a child to live the child should be removed, not just put in childcare for an extra few hours and returned back to an unsafe home. So yes, YABU.

Handsoffreturns
I'd rather see minimum wage substantially increased than focussing on expanding tax credits. Wages are way too far out of sync with cost of living. People should be paid decently.

Complete nonsense. First of all high earners won't have any 'free' childcare until 3 and even after that it is only 15 h rather than 30. Also in your example if parents don't work/work very little they should need any childcare.
I think this country can afford free childcare for everyone like they do in France. The idea of penalising higher earners by reducing the allowance even further is simply ridiculous as it will inevitably impact women's ability to continue her career. Let's also not forget that the high earners are the ones paying overwhelming majority of tax in this country.

God forbid working parents are entitled to help with childcare