30 hour free childcare - Stretched with 2 providers, one is term time only, one is open all year. How does it work?

[JC21]

Hi everyone,

We are planning on using 30 hours free childcare for our son, he will start preschool in September and we have our code already.

I just wanted to ask how we go about stretching the hours with two providers. One is term time only and the other is open all year around.

Do we need to agree something between the two providers, and is there some form to fill out?

The intention is to use the school as much as possible in term time and keep him in the nursery (which has preschool) minimum time allowed, and then use the nursery fully during the school holidays.

It's our first time doing this so we are not really sure how the whole process works, especially when we add stretched hours into the mix, and with one being term time only and one not.

Any advice would be appreciated!

You have to ask if they will accept stretching the hours, some providers do, some don’t.

You need to figure out how many hours you plan to use in each setting. Is the nursery flexible enough to allow you to increase his hours during the holidays?

Thank you Teal and Teal. The nursery is fine with stretching the hours. However I am not sure with the school. Even though we obviously can't use the school during holiday time do we still have to ask if they will accept stretching the hours to include nursery in school hols?

I think that you would need to K ow how many hours per week you would be using at the preschool. Then it's up to you how you use the rest of the hours.
So for example if you are using 15 hours per week at preschool. That leaves you 15 hours out of the 30 for the nursery to stretch.

We'll be splitting ours come September, with 18 hours at the school nursery and 12 with a childminder, and child will go to the childminder in holidays. We've just left it 'unstretched', so to speak, so CM claims the 12 hours for 38 weeks of the year and we'll just pay her normal rate for anything over and above that. It just seemed the least complicated way of doing it. She does her bills for the year from Sept to August, and just splits the total amount by 12, so we still pay the same every month.