charging for shifts

[sue9398]

Hi everyone I have been a cm for under 1 year and have been approached by a parent wanting me to cover shifts. I do not know what the shifts are yet as it is a new job for the parent and they are unsure what they will be. Can you please advise what i should charge for the days i do not have the child. thanks

When a parent works shifts it is normal practice for a childminder to charge either full fee or a retainer fee to cover the days when the parent is off work. This is very much up to you as a childminder as to whether you are happy for a mindee to be coming various days each week and therfore a possible variable income or whether you prefer to know what income you will be having each week.
I have had a parent who worked shifts on an 18 day rolling pattern so I worked out how many hours were going to be used over this period and decided to do a minimum charge for each week of so many hours so that I knew what I was going to earn at least. Then if a week meant extra hours I charged for the extra hours. What you need to explain to the parent is that although the mindee will be doing in effect part time hours because of the shift pattern they are still taking a full time place as you would be highly unlikely to find another parent who wanted opposite shift hours to that parent iykwim.

I put in the contract the days/times the parent wants to reserve for their child "reserved time period" and when the parent must notify me which, if any, part of the reserved time period they don't want. I can't take another child during this time as I'm keeping it for their child.

They then pay full fees for the booked time period and 1/2 fees for the remainder of the reserved time period. If they haven't let me know which days they want by the agreed day then they pay full fees for the whole of the reserved time period.

Once the parent has told me which days they don't need I am free to book out those days to another child if I can. In which case the shift working parent doesn't pay the retainer fee for the days their place has been used for someone else.