Osborne to announce free childcare for 2 year olds

[OliviaMumsnet]

In the Autumn Statement the Chancellor will outline a £650 million scheme to provide free early education for about 40 per cent of two year-olds.

Just wondering what MNers think about this....

it's an important job - surestart and the funding that went into it was a recognition of that job and of how it needed to be a job for the whole community that provided opportunities and help for children and parents. this government has slashed away at that. are you ok with that molly?

because in my area nurseries don't do that - any of that. they're private nurseries. and their books are generally overflowing so much that it is hard to get a free nursery place for a 3yo - you have waiting lists for pre-schools etc. there is no way the nurseries do or could do the job you are describing but i'm pleased that yours, because it's in such a deprived area sadly, is so specialist and does that.

the thing is deprived children or children and parents with extra needs don't only live in super deprived areas. and realistically most areas (i'm in central england) has it deprived sections of the community. surestarts were everywhere. in areas like this they were the ONLY facility for this kind of thing. and actually not only for deprived kids. middle class parents have parenting issues funnily enough and bereavements and mental illnesses and substance abuse etc etc.

i'm glad this pilot scheme works in your area and i'm all for as much help and intervention as possible for children who need it and as much as we can afford when allegedly we're in such dire straits we need to destroy public services and sell off everything again but no i don't make sense of destroying all of teh work that has been done and the money spent on surestart and then throwing this in the news as if somehow we'll forget that or not see the absurdity.

i'm also not at all convinced the money should come out of the pockets of the working poor who are not making ends meet already. robbing surestart and tax credits to pay for this insane

and it's purely ideological. they don't like tax credits or surestart (which looks awfully like a state thing of old that actually forges communities and provides services and tries to inject a bit of social mobility) so they're eroding them and what selling this to private nurseries instead of the community based, user stake holder thing that surestart was turning into?

it's shite.

funnily enough that's another thing that surestart was criticised for wasn't it? that it wasn't only poor people who were using it?

are the stinkingly poor, the average poor and the just about keeping our head above water people not allowed to mix and use the same services? are we meant to be ghettoised and not allowed to talk to each other in case we realise that heck, most of our worries and problems are all the same so we don't need to be being divided and ruled!

if so called deprived people get too much the middle classes or those just above the cut off point complain. if the middle classes get to use a facility we complain they're using it. we have to get past this. we need the mixing of classes and the understanding that no one is a foreign body alien to your concerns.

davey boy is not wrong - WE are all in it together it's just that he and his cronies are not part of the WE. they're in their own little safe gang that the absolute vast majority of us will never be in so we need to stick together to protect ourselves from them draining every last bit of blood out of society and the economy for their own profits and ideological imperatives.

and if they get their way of bloody purging the poor from london and the south east that mixing of classes and realisation of shared concerns will really grind to a halt. they won't even see or be near the realities 90% of the population live in - they won't even have to see it out of the car window.

we really have to stick together in a time where i'm tempted to say 'evil' men are trying to drive us all into hating and resenting each other. it's a ploy that we have to rise above. we fall into it far too much here on mn where very many of us are educated and fairly open minded so what chance is there for the community of sun readers to see through this shite and rise above it if we don't?

i'm sorry - someone else used the phrase, "soapbox nailed to my feet at birth" on here the other day. beginning to feel i had the same.

damn it i wish we had shepherd jobs going. i might be able to manage 2 and a half hours of sherperding with my disability! care workers is pretty much all you see advertised here now imogen too. oh and care workers with their own cars, able and willing to work unsociable hours with minimal supervision or support and all for minimum wage

i'm sorry you're waiting on an operation imogen! i hope something pans out very soon.

I'm confused as to why people keep saying 'you can't get a job done in 2.5 hours' - of course you can't. But having those hours paid for would reduce your childcare bill over all.

When my son was 3 and got his funded pre school hours, it saved us about £50 a week compared to what we were paying before the funding began. That's £200 a month - how can that not help people to work?!

I don't think the suggestion was that mothers found a job for a few hours a day.

this isn't for families where the mother is successfully holding down full time work kicking. it's not childcare - the title is misleading but the thread goes into it all well.

swallowedfly

To be honest, I don't like tax credits - it's a completely bonkers bureaucracy heavy system, which is so hard to navigate that even those people who are supposed to be administer it can't give you a reasonable indication of what your award would be until you've made your claim. It's very inflexible, and certainly unsuitable for anyone who's temping, as you're permanently either in danger of overclaiming or not getting enough, when you're not in a situation where you can wait until the end of the tax year to get any of the missing tax credits as your bills are due now.

Taking it away and replacing it by something more sane and visible is a very very good idea.

that's just tosh - there's an online calculator. and it's such an easy application. it couldn't be simpler.

it's perfectly sane.

not sure what solution you think would deal with temp workers? even the tax office struggles to deal with them.

in terms of tax codes and getting the deductions right i mean and taking years to refund overpaid tax.

in good news i got a tax rebate the other day for the year 2005/2006. well i got a letter saying i will get a rebate though not sure if that will take another 5/6 years.

the problem i have with tax credits is that they should be necessary - that the state should have to top up the shite pay given for work in relation to the cost of living so that working people don't starve is pretty shocking.

prior to tax credits the only parents who got anything to help them raise their children were those on full time benefits who got an added increment for having dependents.

you want to go back to that?

slagging off child tax credits is insanity in my book. so many families rely upon them and would not have had them not so long back with absolutely nothing in their place.

even if you loathe labour and everything they did that ctc system has been the only buffer/protector from financial ruin and ending up totally dependent on the state for many, many families of all different shapes and sizes be they single parents, disabled parents, working but shitely paid parents, carer parents etc etc.

lets hope that's not another baby they try to throw out with bath water of appealing to their jolly chap buddies.

it's funny isn't it? labour allegedly were the soft touch who like poor dole bludgers and shaft the middle classes.

but who gave tax credits to alot of the middle class in recognition that they weren't rolling in it and that we should have a system that went by income rather than benefits v working? and who has taken CB from hrt's? and cut them out of the tax credit game and is trying to taking from the larger group to cater only to the very poor/disenfranchised?

tories.

please people who voted for them who are not six figure salaries - wake up and smell the coffee!

Molly - I had the first 3 when I was in a totally different place in my life - I was part of a couple, both working FT, I was the higher wage earner. I was then diagnosed with a disability, which rendered me unable to work in my previous field as it was barred to me by law, and also left me unable to manage to work more than PT. Then two of my dc were diagnosed with asd. I had my fourth dc as a result of contraception failure - that happened due to my meds for my disability lowering the effectiveness of my contraception. When my fourth dc was 4mo, my Ex-P left.

Life can change on a dime, you know. One minute everything is working fine, your financial situation is hunky-dory, then everything can come crashing down without notice.

Hope it doesn't happen to anyone else.

That online calculator is a crude tool which is not designed to cope with all possible sets of circumstances, and certainly is not designed to cope with any changes.

The sum the online calculator comes up with, in my experiene, is often not the same sum you find on your award, either

The online calculator can't deal with projected earnings properly, but only with looking at what you've earned previously, which is no big help when you or your partner suddenly finds themselves without a job in April, but had a reasonable income previously.

It's a shite tool, in my opinion, but maybe I'm just a bit thick, and I shouldn't have found the last 6 months so stressful, because it's all so easy.

nothing is designed to cope with all sets of circumstances - try using the csa widow!

swallowedAfly - but you're here onto a total fallacy. You seem to think it's either tax credits or no benefits for the groups you have listed at all.

I think tax credits is a shite system to administer benefits to the groups you have listed, so replacing them by a less shite system which administers benefits to the groups you have listed is a good idea.

(And I guess there probably can be quite a lot savings be made by just simplifying the process).

I've never been and hopefully will never be in the position to have to use CSA, so can't comment on it.

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Swallowedafly - they aren't catering to the very poor either - only people that aren't bringing their dc up properly. I class as very poor - but I wouldn't be making use of this. I am quite capable of reading to my dc myself, and talking to them, and picking up on SN +-if they have any - sorry for additions, DS3 'helping' me!

true. so basically they're just going to put a plaster on one section of the community that they fear might nick their cars.

Right, I see what OPs are saying - I did already have a job (it was actually part time, but full days) and the funding was a big help but we could manage without it. The point of the proposed changes is to get mothers 'back to work'. I can see that it wouldn't help much if you had already been out if work for several years and would be looking at a minimum wage ish job anyway.

Sorry, I was thinking of my own situation - and while funding for a two year old would certainly really help middle income type families, I suppose most of them wouldn't qualify anyway.

no they wouldn't qualify kicking. that's why i moaned earlier that the thread title was misleading. this isn't 'childcare' for 2yo's this is intervention of ss type level for 2yo's taking place in private nurseries which in many areas haven't got any space anyway and are def not going to be queuing up to take on developmentally delayed or behaviour issue 2yos for pennies.

I've only skim read this thread, so I apologise in advance if I'm repeating what has already been said.

This scheme is mainly about intervention, rather than childcare. It's about targeting vulnerable children and getting them early to make a difference in their lives.

Our area piloted this scheme with very wishy washy criteria mainly involving families on benefits. It soon became evident that the most disadvantages weren't being reached and a different criteria was used. I accept that this is my LA and that other areas may not work the same, but the children accessing the two yr old funding here greatly benefit from it.

I truly believe that when managed well, this scheme can make a real difference to children who don't get the chances in life that others, quite rightly, take for granted.

Yes, but someone like me, who DOES do the right thing by their dc, does teach them to read and dress themselves etc, doesn't neglect them, doesn't plonk them in front of the TV...is going to lose some of the Tax Credits that enabled them to do this. As is all these very 'disadvantaged' children that are older than 2yo - their parents will have even LESS money, so will spend even LESS on their dc...

How stupid is the Government? While it may help a very small percentage of families that need early intervention - it will be being paid for by OTHER families with exactly the same issues but a slightly older child.