Moving funding to new childminder.

[countrygirl34]

Hi. I would really appreciate some advice from UK childminders regarding the situation we find ourselves in.
My Son is 4 and pre - corona was getting the 15 hrs allowance. When lockdown happened our childminder refunded us the rest of the months top up money. She said she was still allowed to get the funding and didn't want us to pay extra during lockdown.When childminders were allowed to go back she said she felt she couldn't due to her own children being at home and we said we would reassess the situation periodically. I texted on Friday to see how she was and she told me that she was closing her business. I have very luckily found a new childminder who I will meet this week.When I asked how I could transfer the funding the old childminder said it had already been allocated to a 'key worker setting' and I couldn't claim anything until the Autumn.Can anyone explain how this works to me? My husband is an NHS worker and I am returning to the NHS so we are both Key Workers but haven't accessed any childcare since lockdown. I was on hold for a very long time to the council today and when I got through they were confused about the situation and gave me some other numbers to ring. I thought I'd try Mumsnet to get some clarity before I sit on the phone for hours again tomorrow. Thank to anyone who can help!

From my own experience with funding and childminders they have a cut off date to transfer the funding for a term. Think our councils was the 5th.

They pay funding for term time only, there isn't long left on this terms and the funding for the next term will be paid in September.

Councils committed to carry on paying all funding to help childminders & nurseries stay afloat, however they will only have been claiming funding for the hours your child would usually have attended.

I have a relative in the same situation, she is a funeral director, so also a key worker however her DDs nursery has said there is no more space, even though she has 15 hours funding.

She is now having to pay for private childcare for the remainder of the term. It's totally shit.

However, it might be worth discussing with your childminder if they can spread the cost of funding through the year.

I have 30 hours with childminder and spread that over the 52 weeks and top up, so I pay the same each month and not more in the holidays.

I'm not sure how this could work at this point in the year, and the childminder may well need the cash injection after being closed for so long, but defo worth an ask.

Thank you for getting back to me. I'm still a little confused as to where the money actually ended up and I'm finding it hard not to feel a little miffed now as it turns out the old childminder has known for several weeks that she wasn't taking us back. She is waiting for the result of a job interview. From what you say - if only she's told us earlier we could have taken this terms funding to another childminder.

It’s almost certainly too late to move funding this late in the term. My council weren’t doing any funding transfers at all this term.

The headcount day in our borough was 21st May so wouldn’t have made a difference. The government specially said they wouldn’t be clawing back funding for children and you can claim again from September.

The mystery goes on. The childminder says she didn't get the funding but it was allocated to a key worker children fund? Somewhere, someone has some funding with my child's name on it and it just seems very odd that he's not able to benefit from that. I understand that it's only 6 weeks until the end of term but that's quite a lot of childcare to pay for when we weren't expecting it. Maybe the council will be able to tell me tomorrow. Many thanks for your help.

I've never heard of a keyworker fund, but it will be the council that administer funding not the childminder.

Your childminder would have been paid the funding back in April for this current term and here in Leicestershire any amendments had to be done by the 5th June so it would be too late now to transfer this terms to another provider. However I’m a childminder and have never heard of a key worker fund. It’s a bit naughty of her not to tell you before she was finishing as it could have been transferred on the last amendment head count if she had.

I wonder if she is calling it a keyworker fund as childminders are keyworkers and the government said all childcare providers will still be paid for the funded hours this term no matter what and it won’t be taken off them. So yes it’s too late now to transfer the money to another provider so you have lots this terms hours as they can not be banked and used at a later date. As a childminder I only offer funded hours term time as I take all my holidays during the school holidays. if parents want all year round care they then have to pay my normal hourly rate in the school holidays.

Try your Local Authority again. They are all doing different things. Ours would transfer the remaining funding to another setting for you.

You need to talk to the Local Authority and find out how they are doing this.
I think what your childminder may mean is that settings were guaranteed funding for this term based on the children they would have expected to attend.
Some LAs have allocated extra money for children to transfer to new settings under your circumstances; some are clawing back the money from the original setting.
However, I think you may be too late in this instance to claim from your new provider. Only your LA can advise you on the procedure they've decided.

Are you in Wales by any chance? It's all changed here, 3 and 4 year old funding has been pulled.

I also looked in to this - basically if she has been paid the entire term upfront as happens in my area you would need to ASK her to return the money and then I can be used to pay the new provider for the remainder of the term! So very very unlikely you'll see the funds again. You could report her to the LA though and see what happens??

CM hasn't done anything wrong. In my LA we have been told that funding money will not be clawed back or transfered to another provider. You need to speak to the relevant LA.

I agree (I meant to answer this this morning)

By ‘reporting her’ you’re implying she’s done something wrong. She hasn’t, we’ve specifically been told that the funding is ours to keep. It’s difficult for everyone but you’re getting angry at her for no reason.

@GeorgieTheGorgeousGoat

She has done something wrong though if she accepted that terms payment upfront knowing full well she had little intention of providing the care it related to if she was always planning on finding another job. To me that's fraud.......

1. It’s not fraud, the funding was paid without the clauses that you are inventing.
2. You don’t know that she had little intention of providing care, many settings have had to close due to unforeseen circumstances, the pandemic has affected businesses of all types and many thousands will be unable to continue trading.
3. The OP says the childminder didn’t get the funding in the end..... it’s possible the OP doesn’t have the whole story and you have unfairly branded the CM a fraud.

I'm a childminder and one of the children I care for also attends nursery. The nursery closed at the beginning of lockdown but i stayed open for key workers. On June 1st the funding for the child was transferred to me for the extra hours the child started doing with me. The parents of this child are not key workers btw. He only came back to me 1st June and is doing 30 hours with me instead of the usual 15. The LA are going to claw it back in September

Thank you all. Regardless of what normally happens I have finally discovered that I can actually claim funding for these last few weeks as they are being much more flexible and fully realise that it is unfair for us to pay to cover extra shifts in a hospital- so hopefully all sorted with out any confrontation with the CM which I never wanted as she was a great childminder. I still don’t know if she got the funding but was upset to find that she had still not told the other parents she’s closing but has been selling all of her toys etc on Facebook for several weeks. Anyway. Not much we can do about that. Moral of the story is that the rules are currently quite flexible!!

That's good to know! It's what parents and settings were promised back in March so it's good to hear that your LA is honouring that promise.