Why can nurseries not just tell you when a space will come available?

[houseargh]

Of course I understand that they can't know about unplanned drop-outs when people move area or whatever, but those would only result in places opening sooner rather than later. Surely it's possible to say, on the basis of the children currently in the nursery, their ages, and the current waiting list, when a place will next become available for eg. a 2 year old. Am I missing something?

I mean, I guess by being vague they get excess people paying the deposit in the hopes that a space comes up, and this is a way to make money. But given the shortage of childcare spaces anyway, and the level of stress involved with moving and trying to find a space at short notice, would a straight answer be so hard?

Rant over.

The nurseries I’ve worked in never took a deposit until the place was offered. The deposit secured it.

It depended who was on the waiting list and what session availability was and what parents had requested. So say just a whole Tuesday appeared, we would first look at any existing parents on the register who had requested a whole Tuesday if it came up and that’s who would be offered first. Next in the queue would be new parents who only wanted a Tuesday (which to be honest was normally no one, no one wanted just one day generally speaking) So we would then approach families who were looking for more but offer this one day with a view to increasing their time when space comes up, and we would be realistic. We would aim for a younger child who we would normally be able to accommodate fully by the coming summer or September when school leavers left and a mass of children shifted up to the next room.

We had a waiting list for most sessions and would make contact when sessions were about to become available and advise when more would be. It was generally in order of enquiry. We definitely made contact, it’s a business and to be successful it needed to be full. My manager was very up front and would normally be able to say exactly when she would be able t9 fit a child in and you could secure it there and then and hope for an earlier start or look elsewhere.