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).

Here we go. Should having children only be reserved for the ultra rich who can live off one income? How regressive

I do think fewer and fewer people will have *more than one DC. You can stretch to it once can’t you but it’s a lot harder shelling out those extortionate fees for another 4 years, even if your older child is in school.

Didn't take long for the pensioner bashing to start.
I am a pensioner who is still working. Life wasn't a bed of roses when my children were young I worked 55 hours a week doing menial jobs for quite a few years to keep a roof over our heads.
I understand perfectly how difficult it is for young people to buy homes.
We would all be better off if we didn't have constant comparisons of how badly off we all are.

Then actively earn less to qualify. You don’t need to apologise but that line is insulting, working hard doesn’t mean more money for millions of people.

It's top 4% now.

Assuming the saving for free hours + tax-free childcare is £6,900 as claimed by the government...

I need to earn £117,000 to take home the same pay as someone on £99k, due to loss of childcare support.

So you pay 100% tax on £17,000 of income.

Pisses me off that the government has just decided to offer these so called free hours but not actually pay for them.

It's like them announcing that everyone's entitled to fifty quid a month free shopping but only paying shops a tenner and makings shops suck up the shortfall or increase prices elsewhere and get the criticism. meanwhile everyone's going oh this government is doing such a wonderful thing...

If they are going to say they're funding childcare then they (well, we, taxpayers) need to actually fund it. Not announce it then leave businesses taking the financial hit.

What about when they start school? It will be the same? I hear a lot about nursery funding which I agree is woeful but it doesn't stop there does it? School is only 30 hours a week during term time

That’s a great analogy

This is us. I'd probably say about 50% of parents with kids in our pre school work part time/Flexi time or grandparents drop off/collect. I am extremely privileged I know to work school hours that allow me to do all the drop offs and collections. However the downside of that is I can't work full time because there would be nothing left after childcare costs and have to scrape A/L together for school holidays. This term I'll pay 9 hours a week with the other 15 funded but the hourly rate is £5.50 with no additional costs. Once he gets his 30 hours there will be nothing to pay. However I do appreciate not everybody has this option as although only needing 6 hours a day before DS was pre school age he had to do 10 hours a day in a nursery as that was what offered to children under 3 in our rural area.

Back in 2020 after the first maternity leave was up I'd have been £80 a month up, there was no point. There would still be no point going back full time based on current fees and COL.

OnlyFoolsnMothers

Won't let me quote in your post apparently but in answer to your question about me actively reducing my income,

Yes I'm considering it, I'm an NHS Dr and what is pushing my income up is the waiting lists initiatives brought in to reducing patient waiting times so it really is a catch 22.
Yes myself and many other NHS consultants and GPs could reduce our hours/income but that pushes the NHS even further into despair

The other point I'd like to make is that my nursery have told me that my monthly bill would be cheaper if I wasn't claiming the 15 universal hours (if I just paid the normal daily rate for her 4 days per week and no extra top up) but apparently they will not allow this as my top up fees are subsidising the funded hours brought in for the 2 year olds.
How is that fair?

The parents? They chose to have the children.

To give you some figures for context:

I have DD (3.5yo) and DS (1.5yo). We didn't plan a 2 year age gap but in the view of some of the above I should have aborted a much-wanted second child and got pregnant again 9 months later.

Standard day rate at our nursery in the South East is £96 a day. All nurseries here are charging upwards of £90 for a full day.

DD:
4 days a week, 3 with 7.8 funded hours, 1 full price day. This month her nursery bill (including a 10% discount for sibling) is £1029. After tax free childcare that equates to £863.

DS:
4 full price days a week. This month his nursery bill is £1664. After tax free childcare that equates to £1498.

Total nursery bill for us: £2361.

We are in a large town in the South East. Our jobs only exist in the capital (both in the City). Also, we live near my parents and sister - all of whom are either disabled or working full time as well, but can provide emergency childcare.

Our nursery bill equates to 40% of our take home pay after tax. Mortgage (again, South East, standard 3 bed semi) is a further 25%. Add commuting costs (10%) and we are spending 75% of our income on childcare, housing and commuting. DH and I earn roughly the same amount. Childcare and commuting equate to exactly 50% of one salary now, so he is/I am just working for the pension contributions right now.

I'm degree educated, working in a relevant field, we have a family income of just over 100k and we're only just managing. So I have no idea how anyone else is managing. It feels like this Government would rather see me out of the workplace right now. But whose interest would that be in? I'd love to be at home with the children more but in my field, 7 years out would mean I'd never be able to get back in at the same level (and, drumroll... would never be paying the same tax/NICs I am currently, so would produce less income for the country).

It's all well and good saying have the lifestyle/number of children you can afford, but if it's unaffordable for almost everyone, what's the plan?

Have you asked for an itemised breakdown of the £15 per day food ?

Jeepers. That’s extortionate. Your nursery fees would pretty much wipe out my entire wage.

Of my four local nurseries, two are now charging >£2,300 a month PER CHILD for under-2s.

Jeez that's immense. You can honestly see why the fertility rate is declining year on year when families could have nursery fees like yours 😬

Is £15 solely for food? Ours charges an enhancement fee which is food, wipes, nappies, creams, forest school activities etc. the funded hours don’t really help much over a 51 week full time place. Great if you use 2 days a week term time but over a 10 hour day I think we get 1.5 hours funded per day. Not a lot really.

we are fairly decent earners but after our childcare bill (2.4k per month) and mortgage etc we only just manage.

Have you checked with other nurseries? We get 30 hours which covers 3 full days a week then just pay the daily rate for the holidays.

Nurseries are trying to make another ill thought out, government initiative work and are having to charge to survive.

The Tory government dropped this on the EY sector, despite being told it wouldn’t work (not enough funding, staff or premises).

There are a rising number of providers closing, which is a disaster for working families and more concerning for the emotional well-being of our youngest children.

Contact Gillian Keegan (arrogant, gaslighter) , your local MP and local media.
https://members.parliament.uk/FindYourMP

The fault doesn't lie with the nursery it's with the Government who tell parents the childcare is funded when they don't fund nurseries enough so they have no choice but to charge extra for food and other 'extras' it was difficult enough for them when funded hours only applied to three year olds but now it had been extended it's even more difficult. Which is why so many childcare providers are closing down.

I'm another one in an over-£100k household who is now as of this month paying more, because the nursery has upped their daily rates and cut the small subsidy on food that they'd previously provided. And I have twins, so if you think your nursery fees are high...

So angry at this government. If they actually wanted to tackle quality and availability of EY provision they could have:

• looked at providers' rates
• offered rebates to providers
• promoted through bursaries and scholarships high-quality nursery nurse training
• been honest about the total cost of funding decent quality provision and either funded it elsewhere in the budget or accepted that it was only possible with significantly more investment
• Or one of a dozen other things.

Or, you know, just toss out any old shit for good headlines and leave nurseries to hire 19yo apprentices on £4 an hour and hope they can magically balance the books.

I am pro choice but find this immensely depressing:

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/childcare-scotland-4-10-women-32389407.amp

4 in 10 women in Scotland Serling an abortion give soaring childcare costs as a factor in their decision. This is where we have got to.

My point is this initiative sucks for everyone- but I’m not going to feel bad for 100k earners over others, we all make our calculations and know if we are better or worse off earning more or not. Ultimately most 100k plus earners are better off than the masses