to be so peeved that we spend approx £1400 a month on childcare

[couture1]

I know I have to pay for the service but it leaves me with little left over each month and we need to salaries to get by. I dont want to give up work as 1 cant afford to and 2 Im hoping that when 3dc are at school in 3 years time we will be better off each month - but how do we manage until then?

Rant rant rant

I would actually be better financially better off as working single parent anniemac - I've done the sums on 'entitled to'

"Why should the taxpayer pay?" I have been paying tax for 21 years or more. When I have kids I assume that tax would contribute towards my childcare costs.

'If I was a single parent I would be so much better off financialy. '
really . A single mum with one child gets £114 per week for all food and bills. MOrtgage interest is paid but not capital.
I reckon most workers earn more than that.
I did give up my career to stay at home and after 18 years we're kind of buggered with low income and no pension and I cant find a job.

Riven, why shouldn't a tax payer pay for childcare? Our taxes go on funding a great amount of services (that we don't always use), why shouldn't childcare be one of these services?
Also, given that in the UK (and the world in general) families are more and more fragmented, anyone at any moment could be in the position of needing childcare.
Here in Italy nurseries (those funded by the council) for the under 3 are means testes, so people with higher incomes pay more. Single mothers, parents with 2 or more children, parents on lower income have priority.

tested

for the same reason single parents shouldnt be subsidised to stay at home.

Actually Anniemac is right - there are a number of people who would be better off financially splitting up. My sister was one and did it (not for that reason) and couldnt believe that she was better off (she still cant - finds it appalling and amazing at the same time as both she and dh worked when together), and my dh and I are better off split. And that is fact - have spoken to citizens advice who agree, and done the sums both myself and sister in law (accountant so pretty good with figures). We too are what is termed the working poor. But its not a good enough reason to split up! What my sister found was that it was the hidden benefits that helped her - free prescriptions, school meals, lower council tax (actually I think it got stopped altogether as she hadnt money in the bank), free milk, etc. She got her rent paid completely too. Then worked the hours she was allowed to before losing benefits, claimed everything she was entitled to, and got maintenance. Im not saying it is easy living on such a low income as a single parent, but the low (but not really low who get bumped up a lot with tax credits) income dual workers can be really hit hard - fact. I agree that life as a single parent is much much harder in the sense of having help physically and looking after kids. But not always harder financially.

"A single mum with one child gets £114 per week for all food and bills" what about rent?

I'm a childminder, I have cared for and educated lots of children over the years, I don't just the parents who work, I wouldn't have a job if I did. I do resent the people who resent paying me though, we're the last to pay on some peoples lists.
Oh and the poster who said her freind baby was going to be taken off her for doing a degree!!! never heard of such a thing, they leave kids with the worst parent (you couldn't imagine, think baby p) there must have been other issues. I just don't want to put people off doing degrees. I have looked after children while there parents do them, I am at the moment.......
FREE CHILDCARE FOR ALL (Paid for with OUR taxex, not just single peoples and as people have said, they will be paying for you when your old)

Hando i no longer childmind i work outside of the home and i am a lone parent.

I was a childminder because i love children.

i stopped childminding because some parents treat childminders like dirt, not paying on time or collecting there children on time. plus i was working 50+ hrs a wk and only earning enough to cover the bills (and that was a good wk)

£114 for food and bills - I would love to have that money left each week.

If DH and I split up, the first thing I would do is lt the house go for repossession (we are not that far away fom that now).

Then I'd be knocking on the councils door - I'd be temp accomodation on a coucil estate not very different to the one I live on now. I'd work the hours I do now get HB, Council tax benefit, WTC, CTC, and get FREE childcare. I'd also get maintence payments. Not to mention free prescriptions

I would a hell of a lot better off than I am now. Its the single parent familes who can complain of 'child poverty', its the low income couples.

we are the working poor, no help but earning just over £20 plus for 4 of us

might be better splitting up but I wouldn't dream of it, theres worse things than being skint

£20k!

we're not that skint

Not much worse than being skint ssd - not when it takes over your every thought and you spend all your time worrying if you can buy shopping for the week - and the happiest thought of the day is that the gas/electric companies cannot disconnect you becasue of the child living in your house - no theres not much worse.

see I don't see how we'd be better off. dh earns just under 20K and there's 5 of us. If we split up he'd be expected to pay for all his bills/rent/food etc plus maintenance for his kids out that 20K. So he wouldn't be any better off would he?
I would get income support and CTC minus what DH pays for his kids.

littlemissnosey, I'd rather be skint than single and dealing with my kids alone

lone parents get all my sympathy, not fellow skint folk

I wouldn't be on IS though, because I would be working. So I would get maintence on top of my earnings.

We are not talking about the emotional side of it though. We are talking FINANCIALLY.

And when you work shifts around each other, you do deal with the chidren by yourself - When one of you is at home, the other is at work and vice versa. And for us, that includes weekends.

What pisses me off is people who work in the childcare industry and yet slag off women (and it's always the women they slag off) who work. Despite the fact that these are the people who they are profiting from. It's unprofessional and deeply distasteful. Sorry, but it is.

Reading this thread has made me realise how very grateful I am that Tax Credits cover ALL of my childcare costs. My DH works in a shop and I am a part-time civil servant; we could not live as a family on £13000 a year, but Tax Credits plus my earnings of approx £7000 a year mean we can afford a modest but decent lifestyle.

I suppose we are lucky in that we occupy a neat space between 'utterly poverty-stricken' and 'just well off enough to miss out on Tax Credits'.

does that really happen?

Funny, cos what pisses me off is parents who work in any profession other than childcare moaning about the cost of childcare. Because, in the vast majority of cases, the women who look after their beloved children are earning less than them. A wohm on this thread went so far as to lump the childminder who has been posting here in with all the sahms - until the childminder had a chance to point out that, actually, yes, she is a working parent too.

A childminder is a SAHM. They are not WOHM.

All Mums work. Some work in the home, some work outside the home. A childminder works in the home.

sahwm