How do working mothers manage preschool hours?

[goosey123]

DD1 is just 3 and we have been offered a full time place at local preschool, 9.15 to 3.30. I just wondered how working mums manage these hours? I suppose I am going to have to find a way of managing them when she starts school. But who does manage these hours, when there is the option of doing nursery 8 to 6. I would love her to go to the preschool but I just can't see how. I work 3 full days in central london.

I work from home, so can adapt around preschool, but I know some mum's use a childminder for 'wrap around' and the CM takes/collects the child to preschool.

get a childminder to take her and pick her up

ugh, grammar, ignore apostrophe in mums

I asked the child minder i currently use, she says I would have to pay for the full day as she wouldn't be able to take another child on. Fair enough I suppose. But totally not an option! I assume you have to pay for the preschool apart from the 15 free hours?

I start work at 9.30 and work 15 minutes away so I take DD1 to school (starts 8.50) after dropping DD2 at childminder (at the end of the road) or with granny (5 minutes walk) one day a week. I finish work at 6 but the childminder picks up DD1 from school. DH shares responsibility for morning and evening routines. I am at home on Fridays.

Goosey, why don't you look around for another childminder because the hours you are talking about are the same as a childminder having a child before and after school and they wouldn't dream of charging a parent when the child is at school.

Some childminders just want to do drop offs and pick ups anyway.

Just bear in mind that for childminders, pre school mindees are not the same as before and after schoolies and they may ask for a higher rate, even a full days fee.

Childminders are only allowed 3 children under 5 years so you would be taking a full day space as it is unlikely they could find anyone wanting the other hours. You might alos presumably, want them to care for your child full days during school holidays?

Add to this that children under five are still subject to the Early years foundation stage curriculum in all childcare settings so the childminder will need to keep a learning journal for the time they are with them, making observations, doing assessments of your childs skills etc and planning for their eductional support needs. This will also happen at preschool and the CM /preschool should work in partnership to ensure they are working on ideally same areas to reiforce learning.

So not impossible to find a childminder but thought you should be aware of the above so you do not have a shock

Yes, goosey, and you also have to pay the pre-school for any extra per-hour charges over and above what the Government funds as well, if it's a private nursery.

For example, DD1 did three full days and I thought that meant 6 sessions, 5 are funded so I just pay for the extra one, right? Wrong - I paid for the extra £2 per session (difference between state funding and nursery charges), plus the extra session, plus lunch time supervision charges. It meant that funding was for about half the actual cost. Better than nothing, but something to bear in mind.

IME most CM will ask to be paid for preschool hours.
Most FT working mums (IME) don't bother with a separate preschool and keep their kids in the same FT nursery or CM that they were previously at. Most FT nurseries provide preschool facilities and can take the funding.

Is your CM set up to receive the funding? Not that many are IME.

FWIW for DS1 we did use a small proportion of the funding at a local preschool and paid the CM as well. For DS2 we were lucky enough to come to an arrangement with a CM whereby we did not pay her.

Insomnia
My understanding was that even private nuseries are NOT allowed to charge top up fees. Although many still do.

One option would be for her just to do three morning or afternoon sessions at the pre-school on the days you work which would be mostly funded (or totally funded in state run nurseries) and pay the childminder for the full day. It may work out more expensive overall than a day nursery, but it depends on what the day nursery charge.

For us, as the day nurseries charged quite a bit higher hourly rate than CM, it worked out overall about the same to keep DD1 with CM and do six sessions at nursery when she was 3. I liked the mix of her doing some time at pre-school and some time with CM in a 'homely' environment. When she got back to CMs from pre-school she could just crash on the sofa and watch a DVD if she wanted.

SarkyLady, ours definitely did but this was 3 years ago so things could have changed.

even back then I don't think they were supposed to, but many did. There was a loop hope where they could charge for 'wrap-around' care, meaning that you could only claim the free hours if you also paid for more expensive hours either side. But I think this has now been outlawed.

It is really unfair on the nurseries. Especially as the rate they are paid by the govt for these hours is about to be cut. Our local nursery has been forced to quite dramatically increase its standard hourly rate in order to compensate for this, and have implemented rules that make it hard to get a place for the 'free hours' unless you've already been paying the higher rate for a while.

SarkyLady, can you let me know when that ban came into force? I'd be interested to know as DD2 starts pre-school in September. I can't find any accurate information by Googling, or evidence of the primary legislation, only discussions about it. I found an article from March 2011 which suggested the ban had not come into force yet.

Insomnia
I think that a new set of rules come into force in Sept. I think this in cludes the new lower rate and the tightening of the rules on top-up charging.

All I have seen in what we are sendt by our local council - see the top of the second page:

Cambridgeshire

Mine went to a private nursery so the 'free' element was knocked off the total bill. I was offered a place at the school feeder nursery but it was mornings only which was impossible as I was working full time.

The national code of practice, published Sept 2010 is here (see section 2.7 of the document on the top right).

some dull reading

What Potplant has (I think) described is not allowed under this code of practice, but is (I suspect) still widely done. The should be subtracting the equivalent of the 15 hours at the nurseries standard rate, and not just taking off the amount of funding they receive.

Sorry if I've taking this thread off topic.

Thank you SarkyLady, sorry for hijacking thread, hopefully useful to the OP though too.