30 hours free childcare?

[Futuremummy87]

Can anyone help me? We are about to adopt a little boy who when I return to work will go to Nursery. We will be applying for the 30 hours a week free funding. Though with my working hours we will only need 26 hours a week. Can we use the 4 hours a week we don't use to help cover half terms etc when needed?

If depends on the nursery I believe.

Are you paying for any hours? If not, you can’t usually attend outside of term time. If you pay for full time anyway they usually pro rata across the hours

Lots of nurseries don’t accept children who only do free hours so worth checking before you get your heart set on one!

Yes you’ll need to speak to the nursery, and 30 hours doesn’t seem to go as far as you’d think

Hi Lamp Hat. Can you explain what you mean? I intend to leave little one there for 26 hours. This should be covered right? Sorry, I'm new to all this. Xx

Our nursery were great, we got our 30 hrs and when we went on holiday in term time they allowed us to use the hours in school holidays...however, from what I hear this is rare and lots of nurseries find ways to pop extra charges on as the funding doesn't actually cover costs

Many nurseries have defined periods when you can use the free hours eg; 9am-12 noon; 1pm-4pm; term time only. If you use the nursery outside those hours you will have to pay for that time. This can be beneficial, because as someone has said upthread, many nurseries won’t take children who only do free hours.

My old nursery let me use 'free' hours 9-12 & 1-4 every day, but a morning session is 8-1 so you would pay for 2hrs, and an afternoon session is 1-6 so you'd pay 2hrs, and they charge you for lunch. It's also term time only. I believe the free hours are intended to ensure 3yo get an early start on education, rather than to help parents financially, if you see what I mean. Hence term time only reflects school. And nurseries will try to charge where they can because they only get something like £3.20 per hour per child from the govt, which does not cover their costs. My nursery was £4.60/hr si every funded hour gave them a shortfall. I've swapped to a combination of preschool and childminder now.

Ps you are amazing for adopting, what a wonderful thing to do 😁

It really depends on the nursery. Our 30 hour founding only reduce the full time fee from 1200+ per month to 900. Not as helpful as I expected.

It all depends on the nursery. We used 19h a week and the nursery pro-rata’d It out so we could use it all year round rather than just term time, just depends how flexible they are.

Ask around at the nurseries you're looking at because everyone is different in what they allow. As other PP have said, because it leave a lot of nurseries out of pocket, some won't allow parents who only use free hours or add extras on top to get more money out of parents and cover the shortfall.

I send 3 YO DS to a childminder and he's there more than 30 hours a week. We only get 17hours to use with her because he goes to nursery school 12.5 hours a week and that's counted in the hours. There is some provision for holidays, I think it depends on when your DC birthday is in the school year, but my DS in entitled to 9 weeks worth of free hours for holidays.

Oh sorry, I’ve just seen your question! My DS goes to nursery 9-3, 4 days a week, which should be 24 hours. However, I still end up paying £150-£200/month because of the gap between provision and what’s actually funded.

Another situation: My friend sent her DD to nursery about 8-4, 2 days a week. But nursery hours were actually 7.30am-6pm, so that alone used 20+ hours of her funding on just two shortish days. The nursery needs to employ staff for the entire session, not just the hours your DS (congratulations btw!) will attend, so the hours can get used up much faster than you think.

Definitely worth speaking to nurseries to see exactly how they work it. Good luck!

I'm a childminder and offer stretched Hours (so take 22 per week and offer the remaining hours in school holidays).

I don't add extra charges but have had to put prices up across the board because of funded hours.

Every provision is different, it's worth ringing around and asking to visit a few.