Confused about 30 hours free childcare?

[Kardelen]

So today I went to view a nursery that supposedly does 30 free hours funding for over 3 years.

when I spoke to the worker about this, she said the government says its 30 hours free but it’s not really, as they still have to provide food etc.

so she said it will be about 87 pounds a day, and 700 pounds a month.

im really confused as thought it was actually free? As normally the feeds are around 80 per day anyway?

It’s not free, it is funded and term time only. I get 22hrs a week all year and pay for additional hours, food and consumables. It reduced our bill by about one third.

It’s only usually entirely free if you use a term time only preschool that is only open school hours and provide your own food. Our village preschool is open 9-3 and is free but useless if you work.

It must be possible to access the 30 hours completely free, which may require you to provide lunch and opt your child out of certain activities which would incur a fee.

But yes, there are usually additional charges for lunch, nappies, wipes, activities and materials put on top. Nursery should be able to itemise these and if they don’t the local authority which administers the funding should make sure they do.

how much do you pay if you don’t mind me asking?
how much would you have paid if it wasn’t funded

Hi, I was in your position a year ago, my son is now nearly 4. It's a minefield ! So.... the governments terminology of 30 hours funding is that they give the childcare providers what THEY think is the equivalent of 30 hours payment, which is largely NOT what the nurseries charge per hour, does that make sense? So then you have to top it up, which adds up to a lot! My son does 4 half days (9-12.30) and one full day (9-4) and our fees are still 1500 pounds despite 30 hours free.

Yep, the key word here is funded. Their costs will never be fully covered by what the Government actually give them.

(Ours is term time only so on paper we could get all our hours of attendance free as he does 3.5 hours on 4 days and 7 hours one day which adds up to 21 hours and we still pay £1500 a term!)

@dandeliondaisy
Definitely adds to a lot! I reduced to part time after returning from mat leave with dc1. On mat leave currently for dc2.
my husband doesn’t earn that much either, so it makes more sense for one of us to become stay at home parent.

the issue here however is that I am a nurse and if I was to take a career break I would have to go back to training again, and I don’t want to do this.

Different nursery's do it differently. At DS's old nursery we paid for lunch and tea at around £7 per day. At DD's new nursery we pay for any hours outside of 9.30-4, £7 per hour. £87 a day is more than I paid for either nursery for a full day for a 2 year old!

Nurseries are not allowed to charge a top-up for the 30 hours. Categorically not. They can charge for other things not related to the funded hours and this should be itemised on the invoice. If they are charging a top up they are in breach of the guidance and you should be asking your local authority to investigate (though balanced against the risk that they may decide it’s not worth their while offering funded places at all).

@Kardelen could you join the bank roster and just do the minimum hours to keep your registration?

Ours still costs almost £900 a month for 4 days a week with the 30 “free” hours.
as a pp said - it has reduced by about 1/3.

We also get the 30hrs from Sept and I have asked nursery to provide an approx cost, we currently pay 1140 per month 4 full days and this will go to around 650 per month.
We will have the 30 hours spread through the year and also will have the tax free allowance as well.. so I'm hoping my new bill will be nearer 500 per month..so for us a significant saving

Lots of childminders around here don't charge for consumables (we aren't allowed to call it a top up) we accept the 30 funded hours. I have a child who does 36 hours a week term time only so only pays for 6 hours a week and another who does 20 hours a week so doesn't pay a penny! Nurseries have higher overheads with staff/building costs etc so often have to charge for consumables. It might be worth looking at a childminder.

it's not really free. Govt only pays £4.50 an hour for it so they can't take food etc out of that or they'd lose money. it's also over 38 weeks a year not 52 so if you want 52 then you have to make up the difference.

But £87 a day on top of the hours sounds expensive. We pay £90 a day for our one year old (where ratios are lower) and that includes lunch from 8am to 5:30pm. We live in London Zone 6.

Where do you live? That’s incredibly expensive so at my eldest nursery, the fees were (key word were as they’ve since gone up by £5 a day) £54 a day and she was in for 3 days, the nursery averaged out the funding to give 22 hrs per week. So the funding took about £80 per week off the bill. They still claimed to charge £16 per day for food, no option to bring your own. We moved her.

we moved her to a Provision that charges £5 for lunch care, and we can use the funded hrs for wrap around care and then manage the school holidays with annual leave and putting her in full fee. It works out about £2000 per year cheaper. Next year at nursery school she’ll do 5 days 8:45-3:30 with one day full wrap around care til 6.

My son goes 3 days a week all year. With his funded hours my bill went from £700 to £164 a month

Govt only pays £4.50 an hour

Not sure if it’s different for the additional hours but this isn’t true for the 15 hours provided to all. Those grants are provided by the local authority and the amount per hour varies by local authority.

Most nursery's seem to be different

We can only use six hours free child care a day

That very much depends on the rate that the childminder receives from the local authority. I’m paid £2.55 less than my hourly rate, without parent contributions I wouldn’t be able to offer funding as wouldn’t earn enough to keep a roof over my head, pay all the expenses and provide a great educational service. I would have to either not offer funding, which would be the kiss of death to my business, or I would have to give up childminding and be paid more for working at Tesco 🤷🏼‍♀️

I sent my son 3 days a week, 7.30-5pm. I paid £380 a month after the free hours were allocated. This is as I had to pay for the hours of 7.30-9 and 3-5 and cover his food costs. It really isn't free.

@Zoopyloo I hear you! I am also a childminder. Luckily (or unluckily) the rest of the childminders around me charge the same as my LA funded hour rate (£4.30) so I charge the same as them that way when funding kicks in I would be making a loss! So many times I have considered not offering the funding but after this last budget it would most definitely have been the kids of death for me.

How is it £87 a day? My dds nursery is £62 unfunded. And then it drops to £5 a session (£10 a day) when it's funded.

Kiss not kids

Yes agree that it's misleading and pretty far from free.

As a nurse, could you change the way you work to reduce the hours of care needed such as night, weekends and bank shifts?

That sounds expensive if that’s after the free hours. Do they mean that’s the normal price and they will reduce your bill by the funding from the government? Our old nursery used to just take whatever funding a child received and take the cash value off the bill for the free hours. My youngest is due to start at a different nursery in sept and we have a local nursery place at £75 a day with no funding as she is a baby and all meals and nappies included.