Subsidised childcare va care home fees

[MrBanana]

Discussing the introduction of 15 free hours for two year olds with friends (which I think is flawed but that’s not the point of this post). Friend 1 said childcare has to be made free. I disagree, there’s no political appetite for that. People of retirement age feel quite strongly that parents should be responsible for their own children. They’re the ones who vote in the largest numbers.

I don’t disagree, but I don’t agree that we somehow have it easier. We are told we have to be responsible for our own children. But we can’t now survive on one salary alone. Childcare is now more expensive and inadequately funded. Everyone I know with a two year old has seen their nursery bill increase in anticipation of the “free hours”
to compensate for it.

But then it struck me that these people are the same people who have “worked all their life” and don’t feel they should have to pay their care home fees and if they do, complain about it being unfair. Healthcare is still free to them, whereas we are finding it increasingly difficult to get a dentist for example.

It just struck me how hypocritical the whole argument is - we are supposed to be responsible for our children, by virtue of them being our children, whilst simultaneously working. But the current cohort of retirement age are complaining about, and want to avoid, being financially responsible for themselves! Most won’t have been paying taxes whilst receiving the benefits we’re now paying for childcare/dentistry etc.

Im not sure that’s the best structured argument but I hope I've made my point well enough to be understood.

By like my mother did - doing free childcare of 5 grandchildren over 30 years. She didn't stop doing it until she was in her mid-70s.

I think the answer to your question is dependent on your answer to "how many taxpayers would you like in the future, please?"

Wouldn't it be nice to have a society where everyone could be looked after?

I think to an extent both care for ageing parents and care for children have traditionally been 'women's work' but now women are too busy actually working to keep food on the table, so can neither be a carer for a parent nor provide care for their children during the work day. So I think there is a comparison to be made there.

All that said, I think most people - regardless of their age - have a hard time aligning 'benefits to other people' and 'benefits for me'. I know my mum (who happens to be in her 70s), gets quite riled up about a friend receiving state benefits to support the care of her disabled child, while at the same time telling everyone how she has rigged the system to an extent to get the maximum in state pension for herself by using my (long deceased) dad's pension details. This isn't in the UK, so hard to explain, but it's literally the same state fund that funds both.

It's more an 'it's okay for some, mate' kind of mentality that's the issue - and I don't think you have to be 'old' to have that perspective.

Older people who complain generally in the context that their kids will loose inheritance…not because they want the money for themselves

The ones I know who want to protect their inheritance want to help their dc or gc onto the ladder.

It’s true, the current batch of ‘elderly’ either never paid in, or paid so little in its of little significance.

I guess it depends on your definition of 'elderly'. My parents are mid 70s and have worked in full time jobs all their adult lives bar about 5 years in the early 80s when mum was a SAHM.

They are both still working so both continue to pay tax on their earnings and pension. All their friends are working at least part time so also pay tax

I only know of two friends parents who have completely retired, but they also pay tax on their pension

@SoEmbarrassed2024 you realise that there is a difference between statistics & anecdotal data?

I can’t remember where I saw it, but the figure of £40k avg income per person was the amount listed as how much you’d need to earn to pay in what an average person takes out in their lifetime

This. Housing costs and inflation have eaten away any wriggle room left. Right now, we need to do three things at a societal level in the UK to stop the downward slide:

• get people back into work. That means making it easier for working parents with cheaper, better wrap around childcare. It pays for itself in the long run, reduces gender inequality and (if you are really efficient), can help the kids by replacing some of the lost sure start services. I'd rather spend a £1,000 a year on a toddler than spend £1,000 a month on his adult self in prison or rehab.

• get people back into work x 2. Address the mental health crisis that's keeping young people sick and the NHS backlog that's leaving older people injured (hips, knees, eyes etc). Even if they don't work, it frees up a carer's time to do something else.

• Upskill people. Productivity is too low in this country. Make it cheaper and easier for people to learn new qualifications - this used to be the OU's remit before it decided to charge the same tuition fees as the other universities.

I'd also look into ways to reverse the Brexit barriers and self-harm this bloody government has erected, but that's a long term project.

I haven't rtft but the point of "free" childcare was partly to get mothers people back to work. If it wasn't subsidised, there would be more SAHM not paying tax.

Now "old people" don't pay tax and the government presumably consider them a drain on society, moreso the older they get. Plus there's the cynic in me that the sooner they die, the sooner the government can stop paying their state pension...

BUT there's a significant portion of the female population who have had to reduce their hours or give up work completely to care for their ailing parents. Reducing the amount of tax they pay. The poorest get council funded care homes but have to have next to no savings. But as usual, the squeezed middle are caught in a trap of owning their own home and/or over the savings threshold, who often desperately want to stay in their homes anyway. But care homes are over £1000 a week and very regular carers coming in are pricey too.

Then there's inheritance tax. The government pushed up house prices to the point they're out of reach for FTB until much later in life. But it seems quite short sighted to have to sell that expensive home to put into pockets of private companies.

I wonder if we could find some clever person in government (ha!) who could do the maths of the loss in inheritance tax because of high care fees vs the tax they get from the care homes (and staff?) vs subsidising care home/carer fees for more elderly people and see if there was a better way. I might be way off but where I live there are elderly couples clinging onto £700k+ houses far too big and impractical for them "for their kids", only to have to sell them and for a couple, that's £100k a year in care home fees only lasting 7 years...

My experience - approaching 60:

I paid the (inflation adjusted) equivalent of £1560 for 2 children in full time childcare in 2001. That's with the reduction of a few free hours (12?) for 4 year old. Northern England. Was almost as much as my salary, but kept working to keep skills up and eventually my pension. Is that very much dissimilar to today?

My teen and young adult children have struggled to get an NHS dentist. Only one currently registered. I've had to move practices, make many calls, go on waiting lists etc to be registered at my current practice. Mostly I find the treatment recommended isn't covered by NHS, so pay privately as well. I can't think of any medical treatment I've had free from the NHS that isn't still available to all age groups now.

Not everyone ends up in a care home, most people would rather avoid them and remain at home. Dementia is the ticking timebomb as the population ages though. My parent has this and from a modest estate of £250,000 (including house) everything bar £14,000 has to be spent on their care/care home. I'm not sure where you're seeing this cohort of elders, queuing up for fully- funded carehomes? Most people have to spend virtually all they have (in this case the assets of two people as one partner in the marriage died before needing care).

There's a need for balance at both ends of life.

Oh not another one.

As I said on another thread I'm past state pension age and still working. I pay tax on my reduced occupational pension and on my earnings.

I'm not expecting someone else to finance future care I might need. If I need such care I expect to sell my house to pay for it.

I pay that per month for one child in nursery. So it’s very dissimilar

And your wages are unlikely to have grown plus a private pension scheme that is likely less beneficial.

I think a much wider conversation needs to be had regarding assisted dying. Would anyone, in their right mind, want to linger in a care home for years and years, all of their dignity gone and not know what the hell is going on around them??? I certainly wouldn't want that and I wouldn't want my children to have to deal with that either.

Lets talk about the costs of care homes and who is making all of the profit, all the while paying the majority of their staff minimum wage.

it's an out of control industry now that's making too many people too much money, at the expense of our loved ones suffering.

Disclaimer - I am talking specifically about people with advanced dementia

My friends mum is 96 and is currently in a care home with dementia, it's very distressing for her to visit her but she goes several times a week. She always comes out saying that it was very distressing seeing her mum, but my goodness she's not as bad as some of the other ones in there.

With regards to childcare, if the governments wants more people to be back into work then surely it follows that parents should find it easier to do this. I have 5 year old twins, so I don't need childcare anymore, but back when I did I'd often have a bill for £800+ per month for both of them attending for 1.5 days per week. That was basically my entire salary.

We have some of the highest childcare costs in the entire world to content with.

Yes and it’s normally the ones who talk about benefit scroungers who don’t want to lay a penny towards their care.

Of course I do, but that quote came from a poster that appeared to be making sweeping generalisations rather than quoting actual statistics. And the one they did refer to was women of working age in the 1950s, which is when my parents, now in their 70s were born.

So the question of 'it depends what you consider elderly' is a reasonable one. Because people on this thread are talking about over 60s, but others a referencing things that are only really relevant to people in their 80s and 90s

Well done on being patronising though

We probably need to recognise that the public policy environment to working parent, and to a certain extent to children, has been fairly hostile for a long time now. It's feeling particularly acute as the demographic shift to economic inactivity really starts to bite, but this has been building for many many years - which is probably why this conversation feels difficult.

The reality is, none of us have had it particularly good when it comes to state investment in future generations, particularly compared with some of our neighbours. Having children in the UK tends to be framed as individual choice and responsibility/luxury. Our housing costs are very high (there's a chart doing the rounds on relative house prices in France and the UK which is thoroughly depressing.) And our birth rate has been below the rate of replacement since 1973. So this problem has been building for a long, long time and every year it's getting worse.

People are having children later, in part for economic reasons. People are having fewer children, in part for economic reasons. Study after study shows the link between concern over the costs of having children and the number of children people have.

And so here's our demographic financial time bomb which is only going to get worse. Our productivity growth is rock bottom, and as long as we take as hoc approaches to filling labour shortages rather than investing in skills, that will remain the case. We are going to be relying on immigration to keep the economy solvent for at least the next 50 years, based on the mistakes we've already made (the latest OBR projections are pretty sobering for anyone who thinks this isn't the case...)

We should probably stop making those mistakes.

Thank you . It’s actually because I care about my children’s future that I hope I do not require care ! Obviously there are no guarantees and if that’s where the money goes then so be it 🤷‍♀️
Just to point out that my friends and myself included all worked when our kids were growing up,grandparents helped where they could,I always worked weekends,Christmas as a nurse because husband was then home .
We made lots of sacrifices with family life to not require extra childcare because I can remember back in the 90s our local nursery charged £50 a day…way beyond what we could afford.
Yes all the above sacrifices are the reason we are ok financially now ,but I will most definitely be working until I am 67 .
Am sick of all these shitty threads having a go at my generation.

I was at work full time, paying tax at 15 years old. There was no opportunity for further education, our family needed me to bring in a wage. The only time I've not been in FT employment was when I had small children in the 80s. There was only one nursery in our town and it was almost impossible to get a place so I worked 10 hour night shifts, 2 or 3 nights a week for 9 years. A cheap week at the seaside was the best we could do, holidays abroad didnt ever happen. Once the children were bigger I went back to full time until I hit retirement. I'm 70 soon and I fail to see how we had it easier

Well done on being patronising though

Another great contribution 😜

Oh good.
Another post to bash the elderly.

That’s the same as today’s SAHP though! Most of today’s pensioners worked whilst raising a family (in the 1980s and 90s)

Yep, immigrants are net positive contributors as a group so all the immigrant bashing is annoying.

Pensioners doesn’t = care home users

The elderly, who make up the largest majority of care home places weren’t raising families in the 80s