Minding teachers' children and holiday payments

[banjaxed]

I am interested to know what childminders generally do about payment contracts for minding children of teachers who don't require childminding during the holidays.

We have had a varied experience. Our first CM did not charge us for the holidays at all (a friend of the family), the second was half fees for short holidays but not for the summer holiday, the third was half fees for all holidays and our new CM (yes, we haven't had good luck with our CMs, no, it's nothing to do with our kids) is planning on charging us full fees all year round. This leaves us in the ridiculous situation of paying a lot more for CM during the holidays when dd is not at school (and so is technically needing minded for a full day) and also NOT AT THE CM!!! I understand that CMs need to secure their income, but I can't help feeling we have been got by the short and curlies.

Yes, we are bring asked to pay the full day rate for holidays but not for term time, when DD is actually at the cm. If I can get dh pinned down I'll get him to meet with her and explain this a bit less
emotionally than I can. I am dreading bumping into her.

Police is definitely too far. They will not be interested.

Call the NCMA - you say these childminders set these prices in line with their governing body's guidelines - I would assume these to be Ofsted (who have nothing to do with pricing but are the people who confer and remove registration) and NCMA (membership of which is not compulsory). The National Childminding Association (NCMA) will probably have some of the CMs in this area as their members. The other people you can discuss concerns or complaints about any childminder with are Ofsted - 0300 123 1231.

I am sure that both of these bodies, as well as the local Early Years Team in your council, would be interested to hear of the price-fixing.

Dont sign with her if you dont like her terms. She sounds very inflexible and that doesnt bode well.

See if you can get the place back at the after school club, they are usually cheaper and have far better terms.

Ofsted are definitely not interested in any kind of business practise to do with CMing, they are purely a body which looks at safeguarding and standards.

NCMA recommend certain business practises but have no jurisdiction over what members actually do

The Family Information Service is an organisation with no power over cms, just what it says on the tin - Information Service

If you wanted to get something done about this I would go straight to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT), who enforce competition law and hand out fines etc.

However I can see why you wouldn't actually want to do this. But you ARE wasting your time complaining to Ofsted unless it's a complaint about quality of service, NCMA unless its a complaint that they are somehow breaching the NCMA rules of membership, or FIS as I don't see what they would do at all.

Are you sure it's pricefixing rather than some childminders chatting about their charges? New childminders are particularly prone to exaggerate these discussions as "rules" because they don't feel confident in their pricing and policies. Much easier to say that this is how everyone else has agreed to do it (and it's out of my hands so you can't challenge it!).

Yes, that's what I want to check. But it feels a bit underhand to go snooping around with other cm's when they all meet together every week. But I'll try.

Just heard that they have all decided on charging 6 weeks normal contracted hours and 6 weeks half normal rate for teachers. Phew. This was by text. So I still need to meet up and sign a new contract to that effect and ask about whether the hourly rate and full hour policy is uniform amongst the cms, and which weeks exactly are assigned which rates and where her holidays fit in to all this. But Phew. That's looking a lot better all of a sudden. Still paying as much as we were for nursery hours last year because of the new T&Cs, but at least it is not several hundred pounds more.