To charge this much for childminding

[Anothertiredmom]

posting on behalf of friend who’s not on mumsnet

friend has recently qualified as a childminder. They’ve been working out their fees with the agency who qualified them.

The feedback from a lot of enquiries has been that it’s too expensive and she’s now lost 3 potential customers due to this.

so she wants to know a general opinion on costs please

If you use one, how much do you pay for your childminder? Per hour/per day/wrap around care

she’s been advised to charge around £6 an hour, £52-56 per day(7.30-5.30), and £35 for wrap around care. Snacks are included in wrap around, extra food cost is added for hourly and day rates or they can provide their own.

do you think this is unreasonably high?

I understand it changes based on location, this is for outside of London, midlands town.

It's about £4.50ph for a childminder here. Or £6 before school and £15 after school.

Your friend does sound very expensive.

Wrap around for me in Manchester is £6 morning (drop off 7am, breakfast, walk to school for 9am).
After school pick up at 3:30, snack, collected by 5:30pm £9.

Your prices do seem very expensive to be honest for wraparound!

And yes, 5:30 is too early - 6pm is usual for professional childcare.

My CM charges £6. You pay the hours you need (agreed in advance, not ad hoc).

The wraparound is really expensive. We pay £4 for breakfast club and £16 for after school club and that includes a cooked breakfast (eggs/beans/toast or cereal) and a cooked dinner plus fruit and it's 7:30-6:30.

I think she needs to include a proper meal and go later if she wants the wraparound market

Sorry, slightly off topic - would anyone mind providing insight into how childminders manage to make any money from their work if they're charging £4-£5 per hour?

This isn't snark at all, I can see that's standard and evidently must make sense otherwise people wouldn't do it, but having been self-employed myself I can't get my head around how they make any money at all.

Yeah too high, our amazing childminder is £44 a day (8-6) with everything included (all meals, all snacks and day trips)
Affluent area too

They look after multiple children.

Oohhh, right, duh. I wasn't sure whether that was the case because of pick up and drop off times, and I wasn't sure how a childminder could co-ordinate that with multiple children. Also seems unstable, because I guess if not enough children/clients are on per day they wouldn't break even. Anyway, really not the point. Thanks for providing the rather obvious explanation 😂

The wrap around price is just daft, far too high! The day price is around standard were I am (yorkshire). But I wouldn’t pay it for someone just starting out to be honest. I realise she has plenty of experience in similar jobs but she has little to no experience or parent references from this new business as a childminder.

A child minder who only cares for one child is a nanny and charges a lot more.

I assume the childminder can only take on children at one or at most two schools if they are doing wrap around.

We pay 4.50 an hour, Cambridgeshire

Haha no worries.

my son's CM has a few younger children during the day, and then a couple more after school. I think she can have 3 small ones, so that's £120 a day, and then she makes maybe £30-45 additional per day for the after school care. It's reliable as you contract to set hours a month. As she childminds at home, her outgoings are fairly limited I would imagine, and she has zero childcare costs for her own children.

I don't think it'll make you a millionaire but if you like kids and want to stay at home, it's not a bad way to fund it I would think.

I pay £45 a day, used to be £35 and that includes all meals and taking the kids out places like soft play etc. my son goes to a morning and after school club and I pay £18 for that.
I would never pay your friends prices.

They usually have 4 kids. So works out to around £20 an hour in that case

When I used a childminder for wrap- around she picked up from two primaries (with slightly different start/finish times.

sorry, £180 a day for the babies if there are 3.

The wrap around price is high, I pay that for two children until 6.00pm including snacks. I couldn’t afford £70 per day (for two kids) and would need a 6.00pm pick up.

The main factor driving pricing will be local supply and demand.

If people are leaving/declining her services as being too expensive, presumably they'll be going elsewhere for less.

Our local CM has recently upped prices to £10 for before school & £20 for after. Peoplw think this is a bit expensive, but she can get away with it because:

• the school have no breakfast club

• the ASC is full & charges this price for quite mediocre care
• demand is high - its a very affluent south east commuter town with a lot of professional working parents on high incomes.

£35 for wrap around in the midlands is high. It doesnt matter how wonderful she would be at it if there is no demand in the local market at those prices.

Oh and the £10 before school includes breakfast and £20 after includes home cooked dinner.

So 35 without dinner in the Midlands is extortionate.

£35 for wrap around care This is for both before and after school right? So aprox 3 hours per day? She isn't offering a mix and match?

Seems like she is more interested in maximising her earnings as opposed to find a good client base. Finding good clients should not be underestimated - they return with subsequent children and use wrap around care for most of primary school.

£6 an hour is decent. the wrap around cost is high (I appreciate it needs to be be higher but it's too high)

Look at it this way. She can take 3 full-time and 3 wraparound and stay well within ratios. That's (3x£52 + 3x£35) = £261 per day. Assuming she works just school term time, that's 195 days per year, so £50,895. Does that seem like a lot of money to you? If childminders, in general, made that much money (even taking into account their expenses for insurance, registration, toys etc), do you really think anyone would do (for example) TA jobs where they're paid about 1/3 of that amount. If people could get in excess of £50,000pa for working 10 hours per day Mon-Fri term-time only then everyone would.

There will be people willing to pay the higher price as she's a qualified and experienced teacher, if she is in a reasonably affluent area. A lot of people will probably want something cheaper though. I think she should hold out a bit longer before deciding to drop the price.

South East here - our was around £4.50 an hour incl snacks.
But given you can have 5/6 + kids that's not a badly hourly rate for minding kids at home.
£6 an hour is more than a nursery rate where kids have properly qualified staff, activities and lots of other kids to play with.

DD’s Childminder with 20years experience in a middle/upper class area charges £9 before and £15 after school or £22 for both. Her fees are increasing by 50p a session in February.
Drop off anytime from 7.30am and pick up by 6pm.
Food included.
Food:
Breakfasts vary
cereal/porridge
toast/pancake/crumpet

After school:
soup & bread
cheese &crackers
sandwich & veg sticks
egg and toast
baked potato & filling
beans on toast

fruit
small treat - yogurt, mousse, ice lolly, animal bar, cookie etc.