Student Finance help?

[Coffeemonster1]

I am starting my nursing in Feb 2016 and have a few q's regarding student finance.
Is the dependants/parent learning allowance the same thing as the NHS childcare allowance that pays for up to 85% of your nursery fee's while you study? Or is this a different application entirely?

How do we get an idea on what tax credits etc we are entitled to? As the online calculator doesn't have an option for being a full time student (meaning I am not unemployed and requiring childcare, I will be in full time education)- we will be living off just DH's income.

Also are there some working tax credits/child tax credits that affect your student finance?

According to the online calculators from the NHS I will be entitled to £6000 in total for my first year, no dependants allowance and no parents learning allowance and no mention of support with childcare costs. That's £500 a month!!

Am wondering wether it's actually do-able financially and don't want to end up leaving because we can afford it.

Hi coffeemonster I don't know a great deal about the differences between NHS bursary and normal student finance however, I know that in terms of normal undergrad student finance (which I'm assuming is same for NHS), any student loan / bursary doesn't count as income for tax credits. As long as your DH has a low enough income / works enough hours then you should qualify for working tax credits. I'm pretty sure any student finance childcare elements mean you can't then claim the childcare element of the child tax credits - if that makes sense? Also I'm pretty sure tax credits aren't counting as income for student finance purposes. If you post on the student parents board they may be able to help give you more info. It all gets pretty complicated with finances as a student parent.

NHS bursaries have a facebook [https://www.facebook.com/NHSstudentbursaries?fref=ts page] ask them, the system is quite different to student finance.

here sorry failed with the link

Student nurse here. The dependent's allowance is different to the childcare allowance - I think it's to take into account the fact that someone with a child will have more outgoings in term of rent, food, clothing etc than someone without. The childcare allowance is obviously just for childcare costs. You can't apply for the childcare allowance if you're not entitled to the dependent's allowance. I'm not entitled to either because of DH's income (he earns about £35k, a friend's partner earns a couple of thousand less and she's not entitled either, in fact the only people I know who are entitled are single parents, although it could be that I don't know anyone who's partner has a lower income). My DH's income pays for the mortgage, household bills, day-to-day living etc, my bursary etc of about £560/ month covers we use to cover childcare and cost of running a second car/petrol to uni/placement.

We have one child aged two who goes to a childminder during the week, we have an arrangement with our childminder that she keeps a full-time place but we only pay for 25 hours (which works out at 3 days, more or less) which we can use flexibly over the week, depending on my hours. She's able to do this as in our area there are very, very few people who use full time childcare, most people just two or three days a week. If we don't need 25 hours we still pay for it, if we need more we just pay for however many extra hours we use - so when I did my community placement that was 4 or 5 days per week. All my other placements have been on wards doing long shifts so only three a week generally.
When I'm at uni I usually have two, sometimes three days (or part days) per week, I use the extra time to study at home without a toddler helping, more studying is done in the evenings or at weekends when DH is here. So my childcare usually works out at £400 a month (childminder charges £4 an hour) DH also gets the vouchers through work which saves a bit of money. My friend who also has a toddler sends him to the hospital nursery where they are flexible with hours - I think she just needs to let them know the hours for the next week by the Tuesday and pay for a minimum of something like 5 hours a week, she does pay more than I do though, for the flexibility, over £5 an hour I think and it means that she does try to use the minimum she can which means she has more studying to do evenings and weekends.
Sorry I have waffled on, just trying to give you a bit of insight into how other nursing students make it work, really should get on with my essay now!