10 extra hours of childcare suggested by think tank at £1 per hour

[Italiana]

Yet another think tank has come up with another idea...great debate last night on newsnight and a flurry of tweets today....to get women back to work they suggest free childcare should be for 25 hours per week (now 15) but the additional 10 hours should only cost £1

Read it here

gu.com/p/3bfcq/em

I wonder how much the people in these thinktanks are paid - more than a pound?

"they suggest free childcare should be for 25 hours per week (now 15) but the additional 10 hours should only cost £1"

how is it free then?

sorry i mean how are they calling it free when they are saying it should cost £1? and yes I womder if they would work for £1 an hour.

Net cost of 2.2billion. So maybe they mean the parents pay the £1 and government pay the rest. How would that work though as providers charge different amounts.

It was an interesting programme. The bit that stood out for me was at 33.48 where David Willetts says "child care in this country is unusually expensive. I think it is overregulated and overcomplicated; we ended up... over the past decade we had a big attack on childminders, a big fall in the number of childminders which is a very cost effective way of delivering childcare..."

I don't understand. Is anyone suggesting that people should only be working for £1 per hour? Surely the idea is that it would be subsidised?

I think the parents pay £1 but where the rest is coming from is unclear....strange that we are debating this while it should be our representative associations coming out with questions and answers?
Frankly I am really fed up being discussed like this in the news almost every week...do these people understand the concerns and worried they are causing with their wild ideas?
Universal childcare is another idea...when does it start? who pays for it?

Yes some parts of childcare are over regulated but that is due to LAs, DfE and Ofsted et al imposing unnecessary redtape and duplicity in funding

There is so much evidence of it...why do these people never talk about it when we have clearly told them in the CCommission?

Obviously no one would be paid £1 an hour
You don't work for free for 15 hours a week do you!!

No we don't work for free, BUT the amount we are paid is less than our standard hourly rate, in most cases anyway. Therefore we do work at a loss for those 15 hours. In my case my hourly rate is between £4.80 & £5 an hour, but the Early Years Funding (3-4 year olds) is £3.77 an hour in my county and no-one is allowed to charge a top up fee to make up the difference. Slightly different for those of us who look after funded 2 year olds as that rate is higher, due to increased staff costs because of ratios. That's fine but we don't have ratio issues as childminders but still have to follow the EYFS like nurseries and playgroups do for the 3-4 year olds, but we can't have more children per adult like they can!

Badger, forgive me I'd I am thinking about this too simplistically, but isn't the fact you get paid less for funded children than you do for non-funded built into your business plan and the rates you charge are calculated accordingly? Also, whether it's £1 or £3.77 an hour, that's per child isn't it? So if you had 5 funded children at the current rates you will gross nearly £30 per hour.

I do understand that it is not easy being a CM and that it will never make you very rich, but I was quite surprised to see posters here saying that because parents may only have to pay £1 per hour for an extra 10 hours, that this would mean child care providers would only be paid £1. Iirc, the article quite explicitly stated that it would be costing the country an extra £2billion.

I think that I'm in the same area as Badgerhead as I get the same amount for a funded child. However, I never advertise the fact that I can offer the 15 hours funded care as it just costs me too much money. Why would I take a child for £3.77 per hour when my normal rate is £6? I only ever have 3 children in my care.

As for doing a business plan and taking into account this drop in hourly rate, are you suggesting I offset it and charge other parents more? My costs are astronomical, the cost of food has gone up 1/3 since I started 9 years ago, the cost of fuel, heating etc and I have only raised my rates once in all those years.....