Changing nursery and funded hours

[Jimjams24]

Hi, our DS is with a childminder and we are moving him to a nursery. Our child minder said we might not be able to use funded hours at the nursery because she has already claimed the funding for the term and been paid (I assume she means summer term) - is she right?

childminder has a 6 week notice period. We gave notice on 24 March and said our last day would be 8 May (so we gave 7 weeks notice). He’ll continue going to her until then and we always expected to pay for that notice period, but using our funded hours.

our childminder doesn’t stretch the funded hours, she apples it per term.

i have been asked to reconfirm my childcare eligibility between 25 March and 21 April - not sure if that is relevant.

so question is - is childminder right that I can’t use any funded hours for the summer term because she’s already been paid? Seems odd that she will get paid funding when she is not providing childcare.

But you will be using the hours as you’ll be using the child minder until 8th May and paying using the hours? Funding is given to the childcare provider by term so your child minder will have the funding for the whole term.

Yes. She’s right it renews every term (September, January and April) the summer term starts after the Easter holidays so your notice runs in to the summer term. Your provider will receive funding to the end of summer term so you can’t receive funding elsewhere until September. Is your provider claiming all 15 hours per week?

As others have said, yes she is correct. The funding is by term, so it will be claimed by your current provider.

Ah ok thanks. My fault then for not checking. We’ll only be using the hours with her until 8 May, so I’d assumed the rest of the hours for the term would be available for us to use the elsewhere. She is probably very glad I gave notice when I did, it’s a nice extra earner for her! and yes she claims the full amount.

Im not sure if it varies by area to area, or is different for a childminder, but….

I work at a pre-school and deal with claiming the funding. The funding for the Summer term has not yet been claimed, the platform is not yet even open to claim until after Easter.

If someone was to hand their 6 weeks notice to us, before the funding has been claimed, which meant they would leave during the Summer term, when I claim the funding I would put in their leaving date which would calculate how much funding the preschool would be entitled to until that date. After that date any new childcare provider is able to do a late claim to claim the hours not being used after their leaving date.

If your notice is given after the official funding claim for the Summer term has been made then your childminder is allowed to keep all funding for that term.

There is a cut off date for funding claims for each term. I guess this date would depend on your own local authority guidance.