My son went back to his childminder at the start of June, 1 day a week, then 2 days and now he’s on his full 3 days a week which is covered mostly by funding from the LA and we top up the Childminder’s rate. The Childminder initially didn’t charge our top up rate mentioning that he wasn’t on full days but invoiced us now (as we expected all along). However my sons hours had changed in June, primarily to stop parents crowding at the door at the Childminder’s request and our family circumstances have also changed since lockdown. The childminder invoiced for pre-COVID hours not new hours so I queried this just to check and the childminder has been quite defensive in reply saying she shouldn’t have allowed us to use funding to cover our top up previously, that we shouldn’t have changed my sons hours without a months notice (this wasn’t mentioned previously), that she will get in trouble if audited, and that we actually owe more than her first invoice. I apologised for causing her difficulty and she has done a u turn and asked me to choose which of her 2 invoices I want to pay. I’m very upset by it all and although we are struggling financially I know everyone is too and I just want to pay what we rightly owe. However, that seems to prevent the Childminder from collecting my sons funding payment which is none of my business but I don’t want to cause a problem. The difference in invoices is actually very small but I don’t know how best to move forward with the whole thing.