New childminder in London- can anyone please give me advice on hom much to charge.

[Sweetpeaherman]

I have just registered as a childminder. I live in South Woodford in North East London.

Can anyone give me any advice on how much to charge. I hope thatI will be able to offer the children a good environment, I have a nice house, want to do lots of outings etc. I was only looking to mind one child as I have a 14 month old son, and was going to charge 6 pounds an hour. Firstly is this the maximum I can charge, and also I have had an enquiry from a parent who has 2 children, one of which is in playgroup in the morning, so it would be one all day and then the other as well in the afternoons.

Please can someone give me an idea of how much I can charge when I am looking after 2 siblings.

Thanks very much any help would be much appreciated.

Have you looked at what other childminders in your area charge? You can get an idea by looking on Childcare.Direct.gov.uk though not all childminders will list details of costs. You could perhaps e-mail a few asking them what they would charge.
You are self-employed, you can charge what you like.
If one is at playgroup and you are taking them, then they are using up one of your under 5 places, even while at playgroup. See this recent thread.

There is loads of info on this website, in this section, with regard to Childminding. Spend a good few hours looking through the messages... you may find using the search facility useful - hint, when searching, select Choose Topics and just select this topic, so you don't search the entire of Mumsnet. Just did a quick search and there was a thread back in Dec 07 with regard to charging for siblings.

Hope that is of some help. I'm not a childminder BTW but a nanny

Thanks very much for the info. It's very helpful.

They don't seem to be charging much, the 2 that have prices stated are 3.50 and 4.50 per hour, which doesn't seem much really! I really was hoping for a little more than that. I'm going to aim a little higher and see if I can convince them I'm worth it.
Thanks for your reply- I appreciate it.

Really you can only relistically charge what the Market forces dictate.

I charge a retainer while a child is in pre school as well.

Policy here

UNDER 5?S IN OTHER SETTINGS

A child is counted as an under 5 by Ofsted until they are in full time education i.e. at school for 10 sessions a week.

A child who is at pre school is a under 5 and if they are with a childminder before and after pre school, and require a fulltime space during the holidays they therefore are taking a childminders full time space. As such you are required to pay retainer fee for the time that they are at preschool, as the childminder cannot then fill the part time that they are at pre school.

But I am not in London, and I would think it probably depend on what part of London you are in.

I also dont give a sibling discount, but then I have awaiting list, so feel that by giving one would not be worth it.

That helps too, thanks.

I suppose that I will find out whether it is a fair price when I have met with a couple of prospective families which I am doing tomorrow.I Suppose I will have to negotiate a little and try and get as much as I can. Don't want to sell myself short, but alternatively I'm keen to start asap and don't want to put people off with unrealisticelly high prices.

Thanks for your comments.

I was in West London and charged £5 an hour or £40 for a full day. However, I didn't do my research beforehand. It was a very low amount for the area but I planned to look after a minimum of 2 children which took me up to a nanny's rate (which is what I did before CM). As a result of being so cheap (nothing to do with my childcare skills!!) I always had plenty of children to look after.

Maybe you could contact a couple of local nurseries to find out their rates. I think most people check out lots of different forms of childcare.

You sound pretty confident so I'm sure you can convince parents you're worth it!!

As a parent of a child with a CM, there are issues to consider other than that you're worth it. I've returned to work and had to find a childminder, and there's no way I could have afforded £6/hour. My take home pay is between £75 and £80 a day, dp's marginally less, £6/hour would have been £54-£60 per day.

Yes, there are childminders in my area of London who charge that and more, and there are certainly nurseries that charge more than that. And if you charge £6 an hour you're likely to be competing more directly with the private nurseries than those who charge £3.50 to £4 an hour. I've met lots of middle class mums (like me) but in better paid jobs who really aren't thinking of options other than nurseries - mostly they're not so rich that they can think of a nanny, and I wonder if as a newly registered CM you would be able to persuade people who can afford £300 a week that they should use you rather than the prestigious nursery using a trendy method of early years education.

My CM charges £5 an hour but only £30 a day and £140 a week, low for this area. 2 of her other mindees are before and after school and are siblings, the other is a toddler, I'm guessing 18 months to 2 years old (DS is just under a year, started there at 10 months) and a year and 3 years are significant ages in terms of who a CM can look after. My options were limited by cost considerations and I feel I've struck very lucky.

I'm not suggesting you have to pitch this low but it might be worth thinking about what you'd prefer in terms of numbers and hours - if you'd prefer to stick with one full time mindee rather than trying to juggle part timers, whether the full time and part time sibling arrangement would have advantages for you etc.