Nursery Funding

Lolsnan

Theworriedwell
£400pm could easily tip a low paid couples over the poverty line

Giving up a job when it pays more than £400 per month because £400 will go on childcare will push you further over the poverty line.

Well explained cold better than me.

Well I work in a nursery and the funding can seem very complicated. We have term time non funding for the three year olds. Codes to apply etc. check with the nursery manager she should help and give clarity.

Theworriedwell
£400pm could easily tip a low paid couples over the poverty line

As a childminder who offers the funded hours I often see parents and grandparents struggling with the amount of funding available to them.
The government has glossed over the fact that the funding that they pay to providers, via their LA who take a % off the amount, does not cover the true cost of providing the care, especially for 3 & 4 year olds.
The amount of hours per year at 30 hours per week over 38 weeks, which is the maximum paid out for, is a total 1140 hours per year. However it is down to each individual setting how they offer these hours, with many now specifying no more than 5 hours per day or even less, with parents then paying inflated fees for the extra hours to make up the loss on the funded hours. We are not allowed to charge a ‘top up’ fee per hour, therefore the private hours costs have gone up considerably. Additionally we can only as for a voluntary contribution for food, outings and specialist activities which occur during the funded hours. Nurseries, especially, are needing to be inventive in the way they cover their costs. The NI rise etc in April was not reflected in the funding given to providers and therefore they have to cover those costs out of an already overstretched budget.

Surely she should have clarified all this and fully researched before she went ahead???? Did nursery not go through this with her? I think she has to pay what she owes just now and look again at what she can afford. 10 hours daily,3 days, is a long time to be at nursery???

Had I wanted my 3 children to go to nursery I would have had to pay it all. No funding whatsoever 50 years ago. Playgroups also had to be paid for.

They are "funded hours" not free hours for term time only so 30x38 or 22 year round

The government rates are often below what it costs to provide the hours - sometimes as little as £3-4 ph in some LAs so nurseries have to look for creative ways to make up the funding

School pre schools often have an advantage financially - they don't open at all outside term time and if they have a qualified teacher they are allowed fewer staff eg
- without a fully qualified teacher 1:8 for 3 year olds
- with a qualified teacher 1:13

Nurseries are allowed to choose how they offer the hours - many do this in sessions so you can only use your hours from - for example - 9-12 and 1-4 so if you want lunchtime or before and after these hours then you have to pay normal rates

The government increases to minimum wage and NI -impacts

Some areas the costs of premises are extortionate

It’s not free. It’s a contribution to the cost. Meals etc are not covered.

Funded Hours (Government Support)
• Government-funded hours (15 or 30 depending on eligibility) are usually given term-time only (38 weeks).
• Many nurseries “stretch” these hours across the full year (so instead of 15 hours per week for 38 weeks, you might get ~11 hours per week for 52 weeks) A.
• This means your invoice shows a consistent deduction each month, rather than fluctuating.

Clearly your daughter didn't do her homework.

No I'm not shocked, I currently have two grandchildren at nursery, the other six have all been at nursery in the past. Saying one of the OPs DD options is to give up work is frankly ridiculous. She needs to pay for 7.65 hrs a week to enable her to do three full days at work. Even on NMW she'd be on over £100 a day so no I don't believe nursery is so expensive she can't work which is confirmed by the OP who says the cost for those hours plus additional costs come to £400 a month.

theworriedwell

Surely paying for 7.65 hrs at nursery isn't going to force her to give up her job? Working three full days a week has to bring in more than the nursery fees.

You would be shocked at nursey prices. After mortgage/rent, childcare is the next largest cost to a young family.

Two of my kids use the system and the tax free account. I guess I raised very clever kids as they read the rules, applied and we're very grateful for the financial help.

Primrose53, we too had no help and nurseries were almost unheard of in our area. In my group of friends, the only one that had help to go back to her profession used a childminder as that was just about the only choice available and she was lucky that her childminder was a trusted family friend - no OFSTED or vetting in those days!

I would hope that things have progressed since then. The world has changed and I am so grateful that I had the choice to have the first 3 years with my children at home although it was tough financially (I went back to part-time work when the younger one was a year old by working two evenings and Saturdays in a supermarket when my DH was at home to look after the children.) Many parents don't have that option now as it takes two decent salaries to have a basic standard of living.

I too would find it confusing, and it makes me very cross that the system seems to be making it deliberately so.

It seems wrong that the “free” hours are only for term time when most parents (unless they are teachers) work for 52 weeks less whatever holiday they get.
.

I think back to when my kids were small and we got no help whatsoever with childcare.

I would find this confusing.

V3ra totally agree - yet another example of a system where it seems to have been made deliberately difficult to Joe Public to apply in order to put people off from accessing what they are able to claim.

helensf

Additional cost for a month is over£400!

If she sets up a Tax Free Childcare account through Government Gateway she will get 20% of that paid for her if she's a standard rate tax payer.

The way it works is that for a bill of £400, she pays £320 into her TFC account and the government automatically adds £80.
Then she finds the nursery on the system and transfers the £400 to them.

(The nursery needs to be registered with the system but I would expect they will be).

helensf, I think that is at the cheaper end of the scale to the costs that lots of parents have to pay over and above the 30 free hours. Surely she earns more than £400 per month for three days a week?

My daughter took the view that even if a large part of her salary was paying towards childcare in the early years, it was worth it to keep her place in the workforce and progress upwards once their circumstances changed in the years to come.

I know not all couples have the same jobs/opportunities/choices of course.

...the application system is a nightmare and she had a lot of difficulties getting the code to input...

The other thing that catches people out is that the funding is for three periods of time a year, more or less in line with the school calendar.

However the eligibility code parents receive must be renewed four times a year, and if that isn't done in time they don't get the funding for the following period.

Then there are the age categories, the latest headlines being that babies can have funding when they're nine months old.
In reality, they can have funding from the start of the next funding period after they reach that age.
So a baby who turns 9 months old on the 2nd September won't qualify for any funding until the 1st of January, four months later.

Trying to explain all the complexities of the system to parents who have believed the headlines is not easy.
Applying for the funding on their behalf is far from straightforward sometimes.

Georgesgran

Plus £17 per day for food and drinks!
Didn’t make a lot of difference for my DDs, but they just had to accept it for the short term.
As you say, you could help fund it?

My son recently had a bill from pre-school where it seemed that he was paying for the food but not for the childcare.

His daughter eats next to nothing!

No one pays £17 a day for a child's meal-it's bonkers.

We paid the bill because it was GD's last term but I couldn't make head nor tail of what we were actually paying for...

helensf

Additional cost for a month is over£400!

She must be earning more than that so it doesn't make sense for her to give up work.

My younger child is now in his late 20s, so it must be 23 years since I used childcare for nursery. I can't remember the details, but some help for childcare was just being introduced and I received something for him in the last year or so.

The system was much as it is now. It only covered 30 hours a week for 38 weeks a year. The nursery my son went to only accepted 51 weeks a year placements. A full week was deemed to be 50 hours.

51 x 50 = 2550
38 x 30 = 1140

Therefore, my son received funding for less than half of the time he was registered and I had to pay the excess myself. I didn't qualify for any support. I was a single parent and my son's father managed t squirm out of paying me any maintenance.

I'm not "pityfishing" - just pointing out that it has ever been thus.

My son earns well over the threshold to be eligible. His wife chooses to work 18 hours a week. They pay for the little one to go to nursery one day a week.