To think a lot of people without kids don’t understand how free hours work?

[whatkatydid2014]

I’ve seen so many comments on threads about costs of childcare asking what more do people want when they already get x amount free.

Just wondering for some of those posters do you realise the extent to which the way “free” hours are managed is problematic for those working full time.

Imagine you have 20 full time places for 3 year olds at nursery and the cost to operate is £100/day per place for a 10 hour day. Current funding allows £6/hour (it will go up but hasn’t yet) for 30 hours a week and it covers about the equivalent of 2 days a week across a calendar year.

Now imagine 30 kids in total use the places (10 full time, 10 2 days a week, 10 3 days a week). In total you get an income for 100 days/week across all 20 kids

All kids get their 30 hours (2 days) as it’s based on both parents working and earning above a certain amount. Thats 60 days a week you only earn £60/day for.

Over the remaining 40 days you have to get back to your average of £100/day so the rate for the extra days is now £160

So the parent who would previously have paid £500 for a full week now pays £480 for 3 days (basically no saving)

The parent who would previously have paid £200 for 2 days does now have free childcare

The parent who would previously have paid £300 for 3 days now pays £160 so has a saving but not equivalent to 2/3 off their bill.

The bigger the gap between actual cost to run nursery at a profit and the government rate the worse the problem. At the moment, in some cases the gaps are so big & cost of living rises so steep that parents end up paying more when they get the free hours than they were without them.

My kids are already finished nursery and when they went this was a much smaller issue as the funded rates were not so far off the actual costs so I’ve no skin in the game but for all the “what more do you want” people - I think a system where the government is transparent about what people are actually getting AND a fairer way to split the subsidy between part time and full time nursery places

Fulltime nursery is not comparable to state school though. Nurseries are often open 10 hours plus a day compared to 6/7 for a school. Nurseries are also open all year round (except maybe Christmas) whereas schools close for around 13 weeks a year. Add in the number of staff required (you couldn't have just 2 adults for 30 babies for example) and it's pretty clear why fulltime nursery isn't fully funded.

(And I don't have kids).

I was a child minder in early tax credits days. They did use to pay parents direct. Which lead to some parents lying about how much they were claiming to get more more money or not paying their childcare and keeping the money

Yes but presumably most people daft enough to do this would just get caught? I got tax credits, extra for childcare and paid my nursery with the money. I had to inform HMRC which nursery I used and how many hours. They did check.
It’s shit if a system is ridiculously complicated because someone somewhere might occasionally get away with cheating.

It's disappointing to see another thread where the OP is annoyed with and criticising childfree people for no reason. A lot of childfree people do actually understand how this childcare support works (like me) whereas a lot of parents do not understand it.

If you don't like the policy or how the govt/media portray it perhaps focus your attention on that instead of blaming childfree people for not understanding something they have no need to understand. Be grateful us childfree people exist otherwise the govt would have to spend its limited funding across even more people so you would receive less.

When I told my parents that nursery would cost £65 (significantly more now) a day they didn’t quite believe it. They did ask about when I would get the free hours and they didn’t understand I’d still have a huge nursery bill.

A lot of people with kids don’t understand tax free childcare and “free” hours because the government deliberately makes sure there is no transparency around this. Then each individual nursery calculates it slightly differently. One nursery we spoke to, charged the same amount regardless of the age of the child, then applied 22 hours full time to nursery cost but you’d have to put the child in for 3 days. One charged a different rate for under 2s, 2-3s and pre-school. They gave the 30 funded hours over holiday too, so 22 hours per week but you would need to top those hours up (about £2 per hour) and outside of those 22 hours you would have an hourly rate. The third one did 30 funding hours term time only and so you would need to send the child mon-Fri to get the funded hours but also pay a top up fee for lunch. If parents with kids and trying to navigate the system can’t understand it, you can’t blame the general public for not understanding it.

Essentially the Govt funding levels are lower than the cost per hour for a child in a nursery. E.g as OP said it may cost £10 per hour for each child for the nursery to cover costs, but the Govt funding is only £6 per hour, so for each funded hour the nursery is losing £4. In order for the nurseries to survive financially they have to increase their rates and this impacts all parents whose hours are not completely funded.
I manage the invoicing at our preschool and we have had to increase our prices from September or face closure.

Haha no you can't! Blimey

Yeah same with mine, the hrs are actually fee, there is just a cost for lunch and lunch supervision £7 a day

Why the fuck are you criticising child free people for government failings in childcare?

I know us barren harridans get blamed for most things but this is quite a reach.

I've decided that the chillded are to blame for potholes in the road. Do you KNOW how much it costs to fix your car when they hit one?

Yes plenty of full time working parents with no family support do this.

I don't think the issue is just childfree people, plenty of people with children don't seem to understand it either.
Some of the nurseries around here (not England, so it is slightly different) have a minimum hour booking (I.e. You couldn't just book the 1.5 days that 15 hours covers) or they charge a top up fee basically, called something else but essentially a charge to top up the difference between the funded hours and the actual cost.

Our 15 hours was actually 12.5hrs in a LA run nursery. No other option.

There is also the problem of availability of spaces. I know several people (me included) that want more hours for my child but there isn't the availability.

I have a child in pre school and hadn't given it much thought so why would someone without kids? My dc does 9am to 3pm term time only in a preschool attached to my older dc's primary. It exactly the same as if they were in reception and it costs me about £100 a month. There is wrap around care available if needed but that's separate.

Yes, many people who work full-time send their kids full-time!

I am extremely surprised that you don't know anyone who does and that this concept is so foreign to you.

People who had DC in the New Labour years will indeed remember it differently

Because the sort of practices you describe were disallowed - the hours were indeed free. And quite a number of settings closed, or joined chains for economies of scale, because even back then, when the government had money to spend, the rate was insufficient.

And they have never been permitted since, but they happen because ends don't meet on this policy and they never have

Sharp practices, of the sort that were explicitly disallowed crept in over time, and every now and again there is a "step" (usually policy change for the scheme, but similar happened with the NI hikes of the early 00s) which shows how badly its creaking.

So we were campaigning, long hard and as loud as we could) in the 00s.

Were you aware back then of exactly the issues you are describing now?

We struggled through, trying to get a change that might only help us for a few months but would make a big difference to all successive parents. And at some stage we gradually fell away from campaigning on that (as other things came up over the course of life)

I share your sense of outrage - the policy has been crap since the first set of revisions that made it uneconomic and provoked the early closures/mergers.

But I am also saddened at any assumption that only those who have preschool DC now would understand the structural issues.

Here we go. We live in a society, whether you like it or not. Do you understand taxation? Who the hell do you think is going to be paying for your state pension, old age healthcare and who exactly will be wiping your arse if people don't have children?

We pay £145/month for our free hours.
That's 2 days a week (so not actually using all the free hours).
This payment covers food and supplies and while I'd rather it was truly 'free', I understand they have to do this - and it means they can afford to offer the free hours without having to massively increase the fees for those paying full time.

It's a joke though. There is places that offer free hours, usually nurseries attached to schools. But these are term time only and 9-3 (if you're lucky - our local one was 9-11.30) and if these free hours are supposed to support working parents then it doesn't really work around normal school hours for most jobs.

I think it they just changed the language around it, and didn't make it sound like parents are getting free full time childcare then it wouldn't seem that bad.

5 days/full time at our nursery is £900/month. That includes the free hours.

I think parents don’t realise the amount of hoops childcare providers have to jump through just to be actually paid the funding - and often it’s also paid late too! Ex childminder here - absolutely hated the paperwork for funded kids. And yes - the amount paid does not cover running costs.

And on top of all of it - there’s a list of rules and regulations that childcare providers have to follow of what they can and can’t charge for as extra. They need to rephrase it as ‘discounted childcare’ - the ‘free hours’ campaign is insulting to childcare providers.

They either need to a) increase the rate or b) allow childcare providers to charge a top up fee to cover the shortfall - otherwise quite frankly, soon there will not be enough childcare providers out there to provide childcare.

Ok but these are hours needed to work full time - 40 hours plus lunch break plus commute.

someone working full time pays more tax compared to working part time so the additional tax will help pay the additional government contribution compared with them working part time and using less nursery hours.

Of course they do. How else would 2 parents manage to work full time?

Yes but we need people to have children and the cost of nursery is so expensive and a necessary cost for them to be able to work.

Childless/free people aren't required to understand how free hours work.

Most of the grumpy comments I see on here about "free hours" are from parents who are cross because they didn't benefit in their time, or people who feel like they're paying more than other parents sending their kids to the same nursery. Not people without kids, who don't care how much anyone's nursery provision costs (and don't need to).

Council-run and school nurseries don't charge a top-up (at least the ones I've come across) so the free hours are genuinely free - this is something I think a lot of parents don't realise. Private nurseries are so much more expensive.

At my son's council-run nursery the 30 free hours were completely free, though in term time only of course so the phrase is still misleading). I still had to pay for lunch, and the free hours could only be in school (ish) hours, so either 9-3 five days a week, or 9-4 four days a week plus an extra two hours on the fifth day if you wanted it. My son did 9-4 four days a week and I paid for two extra hours each day in order to be able to work full days. It worked out as about £200 a month for four full days, and this was in London. It's an Ofsted outstanding nursery with the most lovely staff so it wasn't a case of getting poorer quality for the lower price.

The government not paying a reasonable rate for free provision is nothing new, it's been the case for many other services free at the point of use for the person concerned. Not confined to the Tories, I understand when free bus passes across England and Wales were introduced, bus companies were underpaid.

I’m childfree, I don’t understand how they worked and didn’t really put in the mental effort to understand it from the first post. What the OP doesn’t explain is why she thinks I should understand?

OP obviously wants more support from the government. That is their prerogative. For me, it isn’t going to be a vote winning issue for me or something that I am going to ever really care about enough to campaign for change on, so why do you want my understanding?