COVID-19 nursery closure and refund

[justthisreally]

I have 3DCs in a private nursery. A staff told me today that they are getting themselves ready for the closure in the event of government directive. I asked if parents will be asked to pay for the period of closure. She said that all depends on what their head office decides when the time comes.

I'm self employed. And if I need to look after my DCs, I worry that I will have no income but have this huge nursery cost?

AIBU to expect my private nursery to not charge (including refund for the fees paid in advance) in case of closure?

SIL used to work in a private nursery and she doesn’t think that her ex-colleagues will get paid during a closure. In that case I would hope that parents are being charged very little.

I think for many the decision is the other way around - how much they will pay during closure will depend on how much parents keep paying (as a group). Certainly is for us, there's no scenario where we take payment and don't pass it on to the staff/non negotiable bills.

Literally no one in the history of the universe has insurance for pandemics.
If you do, you’re a fucking genius

If they close they should not make you pay. You have requested the place and it is not available.

In Ireland these all closed for two weeks & no question of refunds for March & they'll request payment for April but will struggle to get paid if it carries on. I have no issue paying because we can & I feel it was the right thing to do here to protect the old & sick & so health care system doesn't fall completely to its knees. Saying that if was on 0hrs r self employed & just didn't have the cash to pay then I'd be chatting to the crèche owner & see if we could come to some arrangement.

Sometimes I think there is no accounting for stupid

I searched our nursery's policies yesterday and couldn't find any mention of this sort of scenario.

I will only be able to afford to keep paying if nursery reduce the fees to account for the fact there won't be the same heating/lighting/food/wipes costs without kids there. That way my tax credits might nearly cover it. However, my tax credits are based on my child attending the nursery and then the funded hours can actually be removed if the child fails to attend regularly. God knows what will be done about that fine detail.

If people don’t continue to pay their nursery fees there will be no nursery to return to when the pandemic is over.

The Childcare Facility where I work like all others in Ireland is closed as of 6pm 13th March - the owner is not charging parents during this time - staff are getting paid as Easter holiday next week & then we will have to sign on for benefit the week after

Of course they should be paid. The place remains available for your child. You're contracted to pay.
Sad for the op that she has no sickness absence contingency for her self employment, but I'm afraid she like many others now maybe about to realise that they have the perks of self employment, like lower ni, pay out as expenses etc so lower tax bills etc and they need to also plan for such eventualities as sickness etc which is ultimately what this boils down to. In the same way as self employed bemoan about maternity pay. Well you're already better off than many and then want the "perks" the rest of us have fully paid into.

They are unreasonable to expect the full cost to be met. They have to remove cost for things like food and negotiate a looser fee with the parents for everyone to get through this the best they can.

Lower, not looser!

I’ve already paid until the end of this term but I would be fairly wary about paying for next term... the kids might not go in at all between Easter and the summer holidays and then nursery is over as they start school 🤷‍♀️ The government expects the peak to be in June so it feels unlikely that schools would open before the summer holidays if they were to close at Easter.

We’re one of the few families at our (school) nursery who actually pay fees as DS goes full time 9-3 mon-fri but we don’t qualify for the 30 hours funding (only 15). We pay £32 for each “half day” that isn’t funded by the govt, so up until the summer hols from Easter that’s £2,000ish.

It’s not the eye watering sums that some people would be asked for if they have under 2 year olds in full time (8-6). Our previous nursery (London) was almost that much per month for a little one.

As much as I feel bad for the nurseries who probably won’t be paid, at the end of the day they are not providing the service they say they will in their T&Cs... if you had a gym membership and the gym closed due to burning down in a fire or some other random event, you wouldn’t keep paying your membership until they rebuilt the gym.

Our last nursery dropped us with 1 months notice when they decided to close, leaving us massively in the lurch. I would imagine a lot of parents won’t want to pay fees to keep a place open for the nursery to close anyway because other parents didn’t... (I can’t see many with a preschool child paying) it’s a difficult situation.

Hmmm yes the starting point must be that you pay, but I would think under the circumstances only to cover their actual costs. Are all nursery staff on contracts or are they on zero hours/ self-employed? Will the government step in? Will they be able to negotiate lower rent for a time? Can they save on other overheads? It is like a chain...

My nursery contract is to not pay if they arent open, but they only close for 2 weeks a year normally. If they close due to the pandemic I would still expect to pay because I want them to reopen when it's all settled. I work for the nhs, we wont be closing down so I will be getting paid. DH works for a small company, who knows what will happen to his job. Theres a lot of uncertainty right now, but we need to be propping up small business like nurseries etc as much as we can to ensure people have jobs to go to when the pandemic has settled.

Op can the children's father not shoulder half of the childcare burden with you so you can at least do some work? (Apologies if you're a lone parent)

Aren’t lots of nursery chains owned by huge private equity companies? I’m which case shouldn’t they be taking any pain rather than parents??. (Appreciate some are small businesses)

Also if our nursery closed pretty sure the staff would easily pick up work as nannies for the kids that can’t go to nursery , so if that happened they could be getting double pay (ie normal nursery salary + cash in hand for nanny work)??
Or am I missing something ?

It has been made quite clear to us that if they close due to staff shortages then we dont pay. If they are made to close then full fees payable.

I personally don't think nurseries should charge for closing down, due to this virus. They're charging for a service, they cannot provide.

I work for a large nursery chain, if we close due to covid19 the parents will be charged full rate.
Staff will receive ssp only.

This is so difficult because nurseries are on such tight margins- and many preschools are charities- that if fees aren’t paid then the staff don’t get paid.

There simply isn’t the cash to pay staff otherwise.

If staff aren’t paid they will have to get other jobs and then when the forced closures are over there won’t be a nursery anymore

This is very difficult. We are planning for this also right now. If fees are not paid, staff will also not be able to be paid, nor will bills and the nursery will probably never reopen. We do understand how hard it will be for families though - we have a plan of sorts...hope it doesn't happen

My friend runs a daycare. By FAR her biggest costs are staff and insurance. The costs of things like food, electricity, nappies etc are minimal in comparison, so she won't be saving much if they close.

She has some reserves, so plans to dip into those, charge 50%, and work with parents who have difficulty.

A couple of parents have approached staff members about private childcare arrangements if closures go ahead, so she's looking into the legalities of reducing their pay during the shutdown as they won't be in desperate need (obviously she's already established that they'd agree to this, and that she'd raise them back to full pay if the private arrangement ended).

@RachelWriggle yes you are missing something. 75% of our staff have their own children - they can't nanny for others...

I wonder if some nurseries may be able to reach a middle ground by reducing the rate during any closure period to a level that allows it to not go bust but is less than full rate? In my office, we have just announced 10% paycuts for all staff for the next six months, which will allow us to not go under and enable us to bounce back afterwards (this is the travel industry, so hit majorly hard).
I do also think, though, that it's a times like this when the downside of self-employment is highlighted. The benefit of being your own boss carries the risk of no safety net, and I don't think you can really moan about that when times are hard.

I don't have an answer but I think a large number of people will take a huge financial hit and companies will go under. I don't think life will be the same again - some positives could be companies being more positive about flexible working and how we receive healthcare via Skype etc.