Free childcare - a farce?

[aliatalia]

Does anyone think the government decided to offer free hours of childcare as an election strategy, which they don't care about or will share details on unless they win?
All local nurseries have said they won't offer it, so I'm guess they decided to fund it knowing that no one will be able to take it up!

Our nursery doesn't give free hours, it reduces the overall fee and we pay (what I presume is) the difference. In reality because the fees at our nursery at high (£130 / day) the funding doesn't go very far but it does reduce the fees a bit.

I was paying 2k for a full time place for mine and that was a few years ago now.

Actually labour said they would look at offering it to the lowest income families and introduce a tapering off of support for higher income families.

Apparently only 17% of nursery's will offer it. Mine won't be offering it

The nurseries I know who did this were forced to stop as it goes against the rules of the funded hours. I presume your council are either unaware or are choosing to turn a blind eye, as its by far the most sensible use of funding imo.

I don’t see how that’s really in reply to me. The poster was complaining about limiting the hours the funding applies in a day and there still being a charge in a day and that there needs to be provision to only use the few hours.
But that already exists in the form of a preschool. Otherwise parents use private nurseries and having caveats in place in terms of when the free hours count etc is still a benefit for parents paying for full days, throughout the full year.

@Londonscallingme

Because qualified workers are realising that actually they aren't being paid enough to make the hard work worth it and are leaving the industry. There are plenty of less stressful jobs that they can be doing for only a tiny bit less money.

I'd rather they were paid more which is easier with less funding as more profit would be available to the companies running them to increase wages.

Despite having 2 pre school aged children my knowledge is lacking. Do the government pay a set amount per hour for each child over 3, no matter where they live in the country and no matter what setting they go to? For example, if it costs a nursery £10 per hour for each child over 3 (staff costs, heating, ground rent, toys, staff training etc) but they are only receiving £5 per hour from the government, they average out the shortfall over children aged 0-3 in extremely high fees, seeing as they aren’t allowed to charge top up to the >3 yo?

If I’m understanding correctly and that is the case then clearly this policy will never work. If every single space is subsidised but not to a great enough extent, where will the short falls come from, if top ups remain banned?

They won’t have to simply have it or not. They are already allowed to limit the number of funded places they offer so they absolutely can decide they’ll only accept it for certain ages or cap the number of funded children overall.

With gritted teeth..

Yeah... very difficult to get around the massive regional differences in cost without allowing for top ups. I am glad of the discount, even if it's not a big one!

The amount is set by the LA, so it differs. And the gov pays each LA different amounts... and some LAs are greedy or skint and take more than they should before passing it on to settings...

Do you know anything about childcare? 2k a month isn’t unheard of.

Thank you for clarifying. It’s a total minefield…

It goes somewhere way to explaining the "we struggle on £100k" posts! I know London nurseries were expensive..

At my nearest nursery, admittedly term time only... an 8.00-5.30 day costs £7 for a child with 30hrs funding.

@Londonscallingme Nurseries are not supposed to charge any top up fees other than optional fees for optional add-ons, it's supposed to be possible to access the funded hours as genuinely free. Most nurseries balance the books by relying on overcharging for the paid hours so that the underfunded free hours don't trigger bankruptcy. As underfunded free hours get closer to full time for all ages it becomes less viable to make this balance, because the subsidising paid-hours will shrink towards nothing.

If your nursery is treating the funded hours as a "discount" they are acting illegally

It isn’t free, it’s funded by the taxpayer. Nothing is actually ever free in life. This is just an extension of the funded hours they already offer so there’s no reason why settings wouldn’t accept this imo.

Hmmm...I guess there must be ways of framing the extra fees so they can circumvent the legislation as that's exactly what our nursery does.

many settings are using the money paid by the 0-2’s to cover the shortfall in the funding so they won’t be able to offer it without going busy

£2,356.20 a month in Highgate, North London (no funding) 😭

Unless someone complains about it the LA will often just ignore it as they know nurseries can’t afford not to

The one here that left scheme charged top ups until someone complained and they were forced to stop. So they pulled out all together as they say it’s not affordable to offer a quality service and offer funded places with no top ups

A friend’s childminder has said that if the full funded hours are rolled out she will have to start asking parents for a suggested ‘voluntary contribution’ or she will go bust and have to fold. So I’m sure there are ways of wording what is essentially top up fees. I actually really feel childcare providers currently given the massive uncertainty this has caused.

Our nursery sent the letter outlining the new fees. So now we pay 1300 a month, they will charge now 1400 and if you use "funded" hours you pay 1200. As we are not entitled to get the funded hours we will have to pay 1400 to sponsor those using free hours. Absolutely ridiculous. The fees increased 50% in 5 years since my eldest went to the same nursery while my salary increased maybe 15%, but effectively less as I have to pay 40% for any increase.

Yeah, honestly people seem not to be getting this. The money supplied for the funded hours is not, in itself, enough to actually fund them. Privately paid hours make up the shortfall, whether from the same parents or others.

Where I live, the local authority did that. They wouldn't pay the £ to parents, but paid £X directly to the nursery and we paid the difference