Huge nursery increase HELP!

[Elew]

Looking for peoples advice / views on this.

My daughter has been going to her nursery for nearly a year now. She does 4 days a week 9am-2:40pm, we use our 30 hours funded and pay £6 per day for a meal and a snack there.

She is currently being monitored for SEN and is due to have some observations done with a specialist who has a very good relationship with the nursery at some point.

We received an email on Friday that starting September the funded places are completely changing. They are no longer offering shorter days and the funded days must be 7:30am-5:30pm, for two days a week. Doesn’t include food etc or her online diary anymore or any sports days parents evenings etc.

For her to attend the 4 days like she has been it would now cost us £776. We can’t afford this at all.

In her notes they have told me her routine is key etc and notice she gets aggravated towards pick up time so I would be picking her up at 2:40ish regardless and also not getting her in until 9-10am like currently.

Do you think this is fair? I understand rising costs etc but an extra £650 a month is just impossible. I’m heartbroken and so worried for my daughter.

Any advice would be appreciated

All of this is completely bizarre !

funding wise but also the fact they’re forcing you to pick up earlier as she’s getting aggravated (what have they done to mitigate her frustration?)

have you looked up others ?

Is it a private nursery or a school one? Usually private nurseries you have to book in for the whole sessions rather than partial days. Ours is 8am until 6pm.

How old is she? I’d be looking for a new nursery.

Is that £776 extra or in total? How old is she? Can you put her in a school nursery instead? We put DD in one last year as we only needed those hours.

This is confusing. They are changing policy to not allow shorter days or spreading out funding??
They are also suggesting that you still pick her up at 2:40 even though you will be paying till 5:30? So you will be losing 41/2 hours each day that has been paid for??????
And they want to charge you more money for sports day? Parents evening? And doing the online diary?? Does a child at nursery need a sports day or a parents evening??

I supoose changes apply for all families?
Find another nursery.

"She does 4 days a week 9am-2:40pm, we use our 30 hours funded and pay £6 per day for a meal and a snack there."

The bottom line is that your child is there 4 days and uses only funded hours because she does short days. A child who does 8-6 each day will use up 10 hours a day, so if they did 4 days, they would be paying for 1 full day each week. Plus they might get a 5 day child to take her place, who would be paying for 2 full days each week. Effectively your child is blocking them making a day or 2s money every week, which they could make if she did longer days to use up her free hours and did less days.

Also I bet kids who don't have free hours or who go over their free hours are charged a daily charge or maybe a half day charge for am and another for pm so if a child without funded hours finished at 2.40 they could charge for morning & afternoon that day. It's rubbish, but I have sympathy with nursery given how little they are paid for the funded hours.

Many nurseries have a policy that you have to have full days, some insist on minimum hours that’s more than 30 too. The problem is that shorter hours mean they have empty space too short to use for another children hence most nurseries saying that if you want half days it 8-1

There is a nursery near us and they also don’t offer funding on partial days so no am/pm sessions and they base a day as 10 hrs so the funding at 30 hrs a week is based on term time - but stretching for all year round gives about 22.5hrs which is basically 2 days and a tiny bit extra.

Its their business to run as they want and maximise profit.

The nursery is about £65 a day so based on paying that for the other 2 days, worst case scenario on a 5 week month it’s £650.

Meals/Snacks/Craft/ Tapestry Subscription (includes a printed book journal at the end of the year) is all extra so that’s probably about right.

I’ve always used a childminder myself but nurseries are always more expensive and generally less flexible - I would however say tho from speaking to friends with younger ones, spaces round here (not sure about where you are!) are a lot more sought after now owing to people getting better funding now than afew years back so do your homework before making any rash decisions.

i agree tho it is a lot of money to find.

Seems like this is the wrong nursery for your needs. You need one that only runs from 9am to 3pm so that your child isn't missing much. It's completely reasonable for a nursery that is open from 7:30 to 5:30 to insist that the funded hours are allocated to full days. Obviously they aren't going to recruit a different customer who only wants to use the nursery from 7:30am to 9:30am and from 14:40 to 17:30 so your partial days are losing them money that they cannot afford to lose. A nursery attached to a school or run by the local council is more likely to have only 9am to 3pm sessions that will work well for you. I am only surprised they didn't move to these new rules sooner.

It’s completely fair. They are probably making a change because they simply can’t survive by continuing the way they are now.

So this is quite normal that nurseries are now pivoting, as theyre stretched beyond belief. BUT, you can also fight it, as you should. Your nursery should absolutely be honoring families who already have an arrangement in place, and only forcing these new rules on new families wanting to join. Our nursery got a load of pushback when they tried to change loads of things at once, and eventually compromised by applying most new rules only to incoming families and gave existing families between 1 and 3 terms to adjust, depending on circumstances. You should also approach your local council, as nurseries do have to uphold certain standards (e.g. they cannot force you to pay for certain extras) and their practices need to be fair and reasonable.

Also, check out iammum_bum on instagram. She went through this exact situation very recently, fought it, and won too x

A nursery is a business. This makes more business sense for them, understandably. You’re going to have to find another nursery unfortunately.

So they are basically asking you to use your 30 hours in 3x10 hour days? Unless you are stretching the funding over the year rather than the term time? And then you’d pay for 1 day to make up the 4th day?

I hate nurseries and think they are nothing better than cartels but I can see the logic here - most parents want working hours - your hours are short and not economical for them

Financially it's not viable for the nursery to have someone doing 9-2.40 and blocking a full time space.

Can you change your work hours and have her in two full days all year round? That would be almost equivalent to 30 hours term time.

Or alternatively move to a school nursery or preschool setting that operates 9am-3pm.

Agree with the school pre school option - they are likely the only ones that will offer the hours you want but you don’t say how older she is and whether she is old enough for school ones?

It sounds like you want a pre-school rather than a nursery. I would see if there are any pre-school places around locally if she's the right age.
They tend to have shorter days.

I think this is fair on their behalf, sorry.

You don’t pay for the hours you use, you pay for the day. So realistically they’ve been giving you a huge discount.

Regarding whether or not preschoolers need parents evenings, it’s down to Ofsted as they expect nurseries and preschools etc., to offer them. Usually held out of the settings opening hours. We’ve been doing them for a few years now. The settings pay an annual fee for the online diaries so I would imagine that’s why they’re asking for money towards the costs. Most of us are struggling to stay open now because of the funding expansion and the rising costs of running a childcare setting. Regarding the hours, you can’t just pay for part of a session/day, ie a full day is 8 hours long but you only want to use, and pay for, 6 hours, unfortunately you still have to pay for the full 8 hours as the setting can’t fill the remaining 2 hours with another child to make up the financial loss to them.