Childcare costs… just fallen off my chair

[Kanfuzed123]

I just did the gov what are you entitled to childcare cost calculator… my childcare costs are £16,000 a year. I have 2 children in part time… part time. I feel faint

I missed out on the 30 free hours with all 3 children! First 2, they introduced it the year after the second started school and the third, covid happened and childcare was shut for much of the eligible time!! 😫

But yes, childcare costs are horrendous. I used a childminder with my last and it was about £10-20 cheaper a day than a nursery. She couldn't provide everything a nursery did but I liked the home from home environment and she did used to go out to community playgroups.

Would a childminder be a more cost effective option?

there just aren’t many around me tbh, I’ve looked. Initially wasn’t too fond of the idea as my mother (an actual child abuser) was a child under and let me tell you, if I could sum up her childminding in 2 words it would be biscuits and tv

I shit an equally large brick when I got my invoice for the summer the other day 😳😳
At this point, factoring in cost of fuel (that my boss has conveniently stopped subsidising), I’m paying to go to work. I am earning nothing.

It's really only 15 hours because the first 15 are available to all 3/4 year olds to stop costs being a barrier to accessing pre-school education.

The main financial help is the TFC.

Support for working parents is appalling.

With those figures you gave that's 'only' £10k a year?

The world's gone mad. Or successive governments have.

1. Carers are not paid enough. Beds are blocked in hospitals because there is insufficient care at home or in homes - or people are sent home prematurely and rebound into A&E swiftly. Ambulances have to queue with dangerously ill patients because there are no beds.
2. Governments promise more medical staff while making it hugely unpopular as a work option and limiting bursaries and pay. And forgetting it takes 5 years to train a nurse and at least 10 for a registrar.
3. While trying to keep women in work (so they can pay tax, pay pensions, pay back their student loans, not be dependent on the state) they give very little for childcare when logic would say pay now, win later.

They could look at healthcare systems in France, childcare in the Nordic lands etc. The latter means higher taxes.

Can I ask why on earth childcare is so expensive in the UK? We live in Denmark (partner is British) and our 1 yo is in nursery 30 h per week which costs us just short £400/m. Full time (up to 52 h per week) is £100 more, so just short of £500/m.
So what is the explanation? I’m shocked! How do people make this work??

Government subsidy is far below other wealthy nations.

For many families it doesn't work - childcare costs keep parents (women) out of the workforce. For many more, one parent's wage goes entirely on the nursery bill and they're working for nothing in the hopes that it will pay off down the line. Others borrow to pay it for the same reason. It's an absolute travesty.

I pay £15k FT for one

For 2 children in for 3 days a week? It’s £650 per 4 week month per child, the gov calculator worked it out at 15,750 per month

Where we are it’s more like £1700-£1800/month per child. It is what it is. It’s not right and there should be better government subsidies but per hour it’s less than I pay my cleaner! We saved before having DC1, knowing the big bills were coming over the next few years. All you can do really until the funding kicks in!

The free 30 hours isn't there to take financial pressure off parents. It's there to give an opportunity to children whose parents would not pay, to go to nursery as well.

And that works because my child went to nursery for the free 30 hours but only because it was free, otherwise I would have had her home while I worked from home.

per year not month

That’s not quite true, @ihavenocats

All children are entitled to fifteen hours, but thirty hours is only (usually, with a handful of exceptions) for working parents. So for the most part, it does exist to try to help working parents.