AIBU to feel annoyed about ‘free childcare’

[CoolMoose]

My 2yo has just started to receive the ‘free’ 15 hours. AIBU to feel like it’s such a joke?! He attends full time at nursery and our bill has reduced from £1600 a month to just shy of £1400 a month (£240 a month reduction). They only offer the funding stretched (you can’t just access the free childcare) and you have to pay for ‘add on’ costs. It’s £15 a day for food….a 2yo doesn’t eat that much, surely! In addition, you have to pay full fees for bank holiday closures.

I have an older child and this is definitely getting worse and worse for families even with extra government funding. When my older child was little I paid £550-600 a month for full time childcare without funding and about £150-200 a month with funding (10 years ago).

So you're saving £240 per month? Nearly £3k per year? That sounds like a huge saving to me, I'd bloody love to suddenly have an extra £3k in my pocket per year! Is that right?

Yes it's subsidised childcare. And yes some nurseries will be struggling but it isn't right that when you pay the "top up" fee its more than the advertised fees for non funded children. That's the bit which makes you think some nurseries are totally milking it! And I work FT and I'm not in anyway materialistic I don't have holidays and a fancy car. I cannot afford not to work even though in the short term nursery costs are killing me! But I don't understand people griping about the tax payers footing the bill on one hand but being OK with social care and schools on the other. You do realise most parents using childcare are doing so in order to pay taxes themselves and have a pension so are less reliant on the state later in life? Its not a choice

Thing is though it is free at many nurseries and very normal where I live regardless of income. My dc both went to funded nurseries, first in a church hall and then at the primary school they now attend. I had to pay £3 per day top up at the school to extend it to the full 6.5 hour school day. Nothing at the church hall.

i think the main issue is that people with pre-schoolers tend to stick to normal working days and hence need wraparound care 8-6 whereas in my town it’s the norm for people with school age children to work flexibly to do pick ups/drop offs and use grandparents - very few use after school clubs.

its pointless saying it’s unaffordable and nurseries can’t exist - because many can and do. You can choose the free one or pay extra for hours/facilities that suit you? Apologies if this sort of thing doesn’t exist in all locations but very normal as far as I can tell!

Unfortunately we are close to an election. The government have thrown a policy in place to give themselves something 'positive' to talk about without the proper planning or funding in place. For those with nursery children it's really not helped at all and I don't think it'll encourage people back to work. The only places it works is with term time school run pre schools. My son has turned 3 this month so just scrapes in for the two year funding as he'd normally have got the 3 year funding in September (term after). It means his 24 hours term time becomes just an invoice for 9 hours a week. They don't charge anything extra because they take in packed lunch and those in nappies provide them. They did put up the hourly rate which I guess offsets the 2 year olds that would normally have paid full rates. There is no way I could work full time to afford nursery fees and wrap around care at the moment even with this extra 'help'. Unfortunately this policy will just continue pushing women into part time work or not working at all.

It doesn't exist where I am I'm afraid - sounds ideal as long as you have grandparents / can work as flexibly as that and don't miss those extra hours of pay for sticking to "normal hours".

I'm eligible for nothing at all OP, imagine how annoyed I am.

I saw the 10 Downing St twitter is publicising that the avg. saving is £6,900 a year.

I suspect pretty much everyone will be saving less than this.

My local nurseries seem to be either not offering these hours at all (already oversubscribed, no need to) - or it amounts to about £50 a week. So a <10%. discount on the fees.

Well - it's better than nothing.

But as OP points out... the reduced cost is still 10x higher than when she had a funded place a decade ago.

And she's still spending £16,800 a year on childcare, which is probably most of one salary.

This kind of behaviour + the funding not covering the cost of a place, is going to cause many nurseries to close.

They are asking for the extra funding because otherwise they can't afford to supply the place.

Wha do you want to happen, the nursery forced to provide a place a loss to them?

Why would anyone own or run a nursery under those conditions?

I do work hard and I don't apologise for earning well, I'm just trying explaining the situation for those of us who earn over 100k in that the universal 15 hours for everyone from age 3 is not actually that in reality

That's more than the NHS or prison service have to feed their customers!

YANBU. The price is not sustainable. We are starting our family pregnant with DC1. Might be one and done because of how expensive everything else, especially childcare! I don’t see how we’d afford it even with a bigger gap

It depends on the nursery, our DS does 3 days and it’s now costing £97 a month with the free hours kicking in which is brilliant IMO.

MidnightPatrol · Today 13:17
RobertJohnsonsShoes · Today 09:58

"£200 last month for 20 hours 'free' childcare. we've just fallen out with the nursery after an increase from £15 to £20 a day. When we challenged the director he said if we don't like it we can leave. We're going to the ombudsman. Even if it comes to nothing, the stress of pulling together the information required is making me feel better."

"This kind of behaviour + the funding not covering the cost of a place, is going to cause many nurseries to close."

Exactly

So you are in the top 2% of earners and complaining?

Rubbish job working in a nursery, minimum wage. Minimum age so paying the bear minimum. I wouldn’t do it. There is a staffing shortage.
I have family member working in a nursery, she retrained, lasted three years. She is leaving end of May.

Can I suggest all of you experiencing this send an email to Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, about this. Better still, put a comment on her Twitter page, she’s bragging shamelessly about this and claiming Labour are opposing it. In fact Labour are highlighting the very problems that you are describing.

At this rate no one can afford children.

I supposed we, the UK, could just import 20 and 30 year olds from elsewhere in 20 years time to suit our needs but most people think that's unacceptable for loads of reasons.

The food in the NHS is absolutely dire, tiny portions and barely edible . I hope nursery food is better than that

Or, people could just have the number of children that they can afford without relying on everyone else to pay for them.

Ding ding ding @Jewelanemone we have a winner!
The classic don't have children if you can't afford them!
Well done mate - brilliant argument there 🙄
Just the spirit of mumsnet. Really rallying around to support working women eh?

People in the bottom 50% probably mostly get universal credit

This is what Gillian Keegan is saying:-
https://twitter.com/GillianKeegan

So no state schools, no maternity leave, no nhs for children.

Our nursery has had to increase costs due to the minimum wage increases and the fact that they chose not to impose a big increase last year, due to the cost of living, but needed to properly raise their fees this year.

The end result is that, with the 2 year funding that we have been able to access from this month, we are only paying £50 a week less than before the 15 "free" hours kicked in. (DS attends for 5 full days a week). So pretty much bugger all difference.

The government really didn't think this through. Under the old system, most nurseries charged high fees for under 3 year olds to subsidise the fact that "free" hours that they offer for over 3s didn't properly cover the nursery costs for those children. With younger children being eligible for "free" hours too, all that will happen is everyone's fees will go up.

At least under the old system you had to pay through the nose for the first few years, but then got some genuine financial relief once they hit 3. Now I am worried that any savings we would have got when the 30 hours for over 3s kicks in will be wiped out by further nursery fee increases to cover the costs of younger children getting "free" hours.