Approval scheme

[jules1972]

Has any nanny dont the childcare approval scheme? How long did the whole process take? Have you found it useful?

The process can take several months, it's highly dependent on how long the CRB check takes to be processed.

I didn't find it useful in 2005. However my boss has just said that she is finally able to get paid using vouchers, so may be going through the process again later this year - though it does all change again in April 2007 - where CAS is taken over by Ofsted... it becomes the Ofsted Childcare Register.
More details about Ofsted Childcare Register (OCR)

Hi Nick,
Do you know if this registration applies to nannies? It talks about "childcare providers". Does that include nannies?

Hi Jura. What I meant was is this training required for nannies, irrespective of qualifying for the voucher scheme? I personally think the voucher scheme is a bit of a scam. And I also fear that putting it under Ofsted makes us one step closer to a registration scheme for nannies (which I am adamately opposed to, but thats a whole nother thread).

Are there any nannies out there that have found it useful?

I was asking about potential changes. I know that registration is not now a requirement to be a nanny.

I know that some people think nannies should be registered. But, I am very firmly opposed to this idea. So I hope that putting the approval scheme under ofsted isn't one step closed to licensing nannies.

Basically, I think if I am going to take on all the responsibilities and costs of hiring a nanny, then I think all the choices should be mine. I don't want the goverment telling me who I can hire, what they can/can't teach, and so on. As a parent, I firmly believe that those choices belong to me.

Also, I think the licensing will only add yet another cost to hiring a nanny. It's too expensive as it is. Not everyone who needs flexible childcare hours can afford all the taxes, etc.. associated with a nanny. I have the same gripe about the approval scheme.

Our nanny is approved, and we pay her partly using vouchers from both our employers, saving us about £2000 per year. We really appreciate her willingness to accept these, and it makes us able to afford her.

We paid for the approval - her being able to be approved (qualified, 1st aid etc) was an advantage to her getting the job with us, but we didn't meet any nannies already approved and were willing and expecting to pay for her to get approved after she started with us.

I know nothing about the upcoming changes. The current system is a bit of a PITA, but mostly harmless and for us the money is worth it. Process took a couple of months including poor communication from them, pointless interview at which she was treated rudely and repeating her recent CRB check.

Hi

Thanks for that. Im going through the approval process now. I had my interview in June but still waiting to hear anything.

How do the vouchers work? How go you pay her with them?

Yes, Jules. Your employer will pay you with the vouchers.

But how does that work?

Don't really know because I don't use them. Just bumping for you.

Uwilla (and all interested),

As far as I know at the moment, the Ofsted Childcare Register (OCR) will be replacing the Childcare Approval Scheme (CAS), though there will be a period of overlap, possibly many months, even perhaps a year. All Childcare regulation in England will subsequently fall under Ofsted - which makes sense to me, as to protect children it is better to have one central register, rather than several smaller registers.

Nannies will not be made to join the scheme. It will be voluntary. However, if parents need to benefit from Tax incentives (such as the current Childcare Voucher scheme) then the Nanny would need to be registered under OCR.

You can find more details about this at: SureStart: Childcare Act

Many aspects of the Ofsted Childcare Register are still in consultation... so you can VOICE any concerns you have directly to Government via the consultation process - Your view must be sent to DfES by 29 September 2006. Consultation Documents and how to respond online can be found at: Consultation: Ofsted Childcare Register

Mention of Nannies within the documents currently available is a little patchy to say the least. However, the Provision of Information document, states that Clause 18 of the Childcare Act, includes Nannies - so Local Authorities from April 2008 will have to provide details about Nannies (who are on the register, I presume) to parents who enquire - so could see the end of Nanny Agencies!

If you don't want to read all the Ofsted Childcare Register consultation documentation, then here are some key bits I located to do with nannies:

From The Consultation Document
Source Document: OCR Consultation 2006
Section 2: Joining

• Providers who care only for children aged 7 and over and nannies will be able to be registered on the Ofsted Childcare Register from April 2007.
• Homecarers (nannies and childminders looking after children only aged 7 and over) who have already been approved through the Childcare Approval Scheme will also transfer automatically to the Ofsted Childcare Register at a date to be agreed. After this time, new homecarers will only have the option of joining the Ofsted Childcare Register.

Section 18: Who Will Be Eligible
Provision for children aged 8 and over, as well as provision for younger children for whom registration will not be compulsory ? for example, nannies and short-term occasional care ? will be able to join the Ofsted Childcare Register on a voluntary basis.

End

From these statements, I conclude that CAS will be phased out, as from a certain date - as yet unknown - they won't be accepting applications. Also that Nannies will be on the OCR, but as is currently the situation with CAS, it will be on a voluntary basis.

Something I found interesting, is that they are not insisting that Nannies have insurance. As a nanny, I feel nannies should have insurance to protect themselves in the event of something going wrong (with luck it will never happen). Childminder's HAVE TO HAVE insurance, yet they are proposing that Nannies don't... see below.

From the Consultation Document
Section 60: Public Liability
We propose that all providers (except nannies) who are registered on the Ofsted Childcare Register will have public liability insurance (PLI) as a signal of their responsibility and liability.

End

Does this mean that the Government does not see nannies as being responsible? Hmm, I can see another debate topic here!

Any nannies reading this? If you are nanny reading this, then I suggest you download the full consultation document (see Source Document link above) as Annex A is worth a read as it sets out what you will need to do for registration under the scheme.

Hope that is of help. With luck, over the next 6 months or so, further information about OCR will become available.

Disclaimer: I am a nanny and the above intrepretation of the documents is my own, and there for is NOT a legal intrepretation. If you require a legal view, please consult a lawyer.

Jules 1972, DP and I both work for an employer who offer the scheme and it is pretty pain free once you get it set up. Having told your employer that you want to join the scheme the actual details are sorted out through a specialist provider who your employer outsources the actual payments to - ours is called Care4. You tell them in advance how much you want them to pay your nanny during the year and instruct them to make a certain payment each month. For reasons I am not clear about, the tax rules mean that there are limited opportunities to change the annual sum you commit to the scheme during the year - you can change it if you go on maternity leave and a few other things but have no automatic right to do so not if you just change your childcarer to a non-approved person who can't use the scheme for example). So a lot of my colleagues (and i) just get care4 to pay the amount which attracts the tax break (currently £214 per month I think) and we pay the balance direct to our nanny - the theory being that that gives us more flexibility if we chop and change our childcare. So our wonderful Kelly ends up with three payments (two from care4 on behalf of each of me and DP and one from us, which she is - luckily for us - fine about. It sounds complicated but its worth getting your head around for £1000 (£2000 if you can both do it!). I think I've made it sound more complicated than it actually is - let me know if its incomprehensible and good luck !

Jules1972: how it works depends on on how your employer's employer manages the voucher system.

DHs employer uses a company who 'does' the vouchers. each month, the voucher amount gets paid into DHs account with ACCOR. He has set up his account so that it automatically gets transferred to our nanny's account with ACCOR, and she has set up her ACCOR account so that it automatically gets transferred into her bank accont. So, now it's set up, the money just appears in her bank account each month. She gets an email to tell her it's been paid in and tranferred out. We can control when this money is paid to her, and we use each month's voucher money to pay her following month's pay, so it's sitting in our ACCOR account for nearly a month. This avoids it beings late - in fact it is usually arrives in her bank account a few days before her pay day. Apart from the original forms, there is no paperwork involved, although I think you can choose to have paper vouchers if you want. If we were just using childcare in the school holidays, for example, we could let the money accumulate in our ACCOR account, and just pay it out when we need it.

My employers do it themselves, and just transfer the money into our nanny's bank account each month. Again - apart from the inital forms, no paperwork involved. This money arrives a couple of days after I would normally pay her, but because of the way my company work it, we can't control that, and she's been very good and accepts this.

I then get her payslip from nannypaye each month, deduct what she will be paid in 'vouchers' and transfer the remainder from our bank account to hers arriving on her payday.
So she gets paid in three separate amounts, but it all just turns up in her account each month without her having to do anything (now it's set up).

To be honest - I think it's a dreadful system, and wish we could pay her salary in one go at the right time, and claim the tax relief back ourselves, but the government have dreamt up this system and we just have to use it. we couldn't afford a nanny otherwise (paying her takes ALL my income - I'd give up work).

I think she got the approval letter about a month after the interview, so it might be worth chasing them - it could be seasonal delays in CRB checks holding it up. Are you doing this to make yourself more 'attractive' to future employers, or for your current employers? I would NOT have chosen someone JUST because they were approved already - I'd choose the best person for the job. If you are doing it for your current employers, I would expect them to pay the fee for you.

Best wishes - any more questions? Hope this helps - it's rather long!

X-posted with latermater.

Thanks for those responses to the query regarding how the vouchers actually get paid, as it's very helpful to me, as my employer may be paying in vouchers later this year.

HamandCheese, a query for you. Does the voucher itself get itemised on the payslip? I presume that tax/ni is paid by the nanny and employer as per usual, but I do wonder if it's considered to be a non-taxable benefit - I may have to hunt through tax rules... alas I doubt HMRC allow it, but you never know.

Nannynick - your question (if I've understood it properly):
Our nanny's payslip does not mention the voucher at all - it is exactly the same as it was when we were paying her all directly ourselves showing the WHOLE amount she gets paid by all means (obviousl,y, showing her gross salary, deductions for NI and tax and her resulting net salary which is what we pay to her). I write a slip to go with it saying £243 from DH vouchers should arrive in your bank x date, £243 from my vouchers should arrive Y date and £XXX direct pay should arrive Z date. HER tax and NI are EXACTLY THE SAME as it would be however she gets paid, and we continue to pay this to the inland revenue whenever nannypaye tell us to. Her contract is for a gross salary, but this has no relevance to the vouchers.

I haven't asked nannypaye to list the voucher amounts and the direct pay amounts on her payslip - I'm not sure whether they could / would. It lists the total amount and I do the sums.

It is only OUR tax and NI that are affected, and in our case our payslips list our reduced salary as our monthly pay (our annual gross salaries are reduced by the amount of the vouchers). This doesn't affect the nanny at all. The vouchers are a non-taxable benefit for US, but taxed as standard income for HER.

Thanks for that... think I understand.

I would be concerned at the lack of a clear audit trail. Luckly for me, my boss does her own payslips, so the voucher amount could easily be shown, which would help tie things together a bit.

I'm thinking of things here like Mortages - mortgage providers often ask to see payslips as proof of income, and bank account statements. If the payslip amount didn't match the amount entering the bank account, I can see there being potential issues. Once explained to the mortgage company which payments all addup to make the payslip amount, it should be plain sailing, but I do feel it does complicate matters. A soluition may be to add them to the payslip.

I am seeing a problem that isn't there, or does anyone feel this sort of thing may be a potential issue?

I think that as long as the TOTAL income was what you were claiming it to be, there wouldn't be a problem, and noone would be bothered about two different "origins" of income. It would just be the same situation as, say, for someone with two jobs, or who supplemented their day job with other work to boost their income: the total would be the same.

Our nanny is currently going through the registration process so that we can start paying her in part in vouchers, and my gripe with the system is not with registration per se, but with its funding.

I am a teacher, my mother is a midwife. Both are regulated professions whose good name is protected by the fact that not just anyone can run around calling themselves a teacher or a midwife. It is generally seen as a "good thing" that this is the case, and our respective registration systems receive a degree of government funding to run them. I would like to know that the professionals who deliver and teach my children were all trained and up to date in their practice, and that they were not being tarnished by people making it up as they went along. It must be extremely annoying for nannies who have completed formal training that anyone who fancies working with under fives can call themselves a nanny without even having to have changed a nappy or diffused a tantrum. Yes, I know that there are people who complete their training who are pants with children, but that goes for teachers and midwives as well: the exceptions don't render the rule useless.

I only pay £30 odd quid a year to be registered with the GTC, for example (and a lot of teachers winge about this and think that they shouldn't have to pay anything... another debate entirely), yet the childcare approval scheme is expected to be self financing. This means that either nannies (hardly the most well-paid people in the world) or their employers) have to shoulder the cost of £99 A YEAR. How on earth are they going to be convinced that it is in their interest when it costs a fortune, takes ages and involves a lot of jumping through hoops?

Surely if the care of under fives and the reputation of brilliant, hard-working and caring nannies (like our one!) is worth protecting, it is worth the same as teachers, nurses or midwives? The costs of £99 per year, the First Aid course, needing to use Nannypaye etc eat into a lot of the savings offered by the voucher system anyway. Grrrrrr.

Don't even start me on how pants this system was: it took her days of being mucked around even to get an interview for her CRB check, and then their office told her that they couldn't tell her where the interview would be and that she would need to look it up on the internet. It's a CRB check, not MI flippin' 6!

I wonder whether Ofsted will be any better...

Also, Nannynick, for us the proportion paid by vouchers will vary from week to week, and Nannypaye are only doing the sums side of things, not how it is actually paid. For example, at the moment only my DH has vouchers because I am on mat. leave, but once I start getting them the amount will change, initially there will be more because he has banked them, etc.

It's all so complicated, isn't it?

Big organisations are employers, not 'lil 'ole me!!!