Consultation on funding payments - response

[sarah707]

If you receive funding (free early education money) for 3 and 4 year olds it is important that you respond to this consultation.

The amount of money you receive will not change if nobody tells the Govt that we are underfunded!!

This is MY reply - you are welcome to use it / rephrase it / change it.

Together we are stronger

Consultation on funding payments

Website - https://www.gov.uk/government/consul...l-for-evidence

The consultation asks for ‘Evidence from early years providers about the factors that make up the cost of providing childcare, and how much of the total cost they represent.’

You can write, send a pre-printed form or email your reply – Costofchildcare.REVIEW@education.gsi.gov.uk

You need to respond by 10th August 2015.

I am going to email my response because the boxes on the pre-printed form are too small.

This is my reply -

I have been a registered childminder for 20+ years. When I first started working as a childminder we were registered with Social Services and paid a pittance by parents to provide care for their children. Now we are regulated by Ofsted and have to comply with the EYFS, safeguarding requirements and other legislation but we are still paid very little per hour by parents who are constantly being told by the Government that their childcare fees are too high.

Childminders are allowed to care for 3 children in the early years age-group which is a good thing – young children take a lot of time and deserve low ratios – but I hope Government recognise that we need to be financially sustainable. We set our fees according to the local areas in which we live. Some childminders are charge parents less than £3 an hour. In my area of Cheshire east I charge £4.20 an hour… I put my fees up by 20p an hour last year for the first time in 5 years. However, the 3 and 4 year old funding from Cheshire east is paid at £1 less an hour for 15 hours a week - and that includes extra for me being graded outstanding.

The fees I charge include food, drinks and cooking, marketing and advertising, vehicle expenses, lighting, heating, cleaning products, resources and equipment, outings for the children and much more. I attend training and do my paperwork out of normal working hours and I spend most of my weekends and evenings living and breathing childminding because, like most of my colleagues, it is my passion as well as my job. Childminder expenses can be anything up to 2/3 of income – this might seem high but we use our own homes for work and we often have to replace furniture, carpets, toys etc that have been damaged by childminded children and of course we are constantly updating our resources and equipment.

The Government has told us that childminders are important and valued, but my net income at the moment is not minimum wage and I am looking towards the future with some concern. Like many childminders I am wondering how I can remain sustainable when the funded sessions are increased to 30 hours a week and I cannot charge parents a top up fee or other fees to recoup the hourly rate shortfall. I want to deliver the highest quality care and learning to the children and I am constantly pushing myself to provide better everything – more resources, new play areas, outings focussed on children’s interests etc but the current funding shortfall will only get worse when we have to find 30 hours a week for funded children – or lose them to other providers who are also in a similar underfunded position.

Add to this the concern that parents in many LAs are being pushed towards nurseries and pre-schools to take their funded sessions – which we recognise will leave childminders with babies and, if we work full time, perhaps 20 hours a week for the 3 and 4 year olds. We are going to have to be very proactive and push ourselves forward as available to offer 30 hours for funded children – but how can we do that if we are forced by our LAs to run at a loss?

We also have to consider that the 30 hours funding is term-time only. What about the holidays? Childminders are still open but we will have an empty place if parents do not want to buy extra hours – we will be forced to hold an empty and not paid for 30 hour (nearly full time) space free for nearly 14 weeks a year. The current rules state that we cannot charge a retainer or other fee for this space and it will simply be unsustainable for us.

A recent poll on a childminding group noted that funded hours are paid at hugely disproportionate rates by different LAs across the country – presumably because the funding is not ring-fenced by Government. We need to receive at least a minimum wage for all the work we are required to do by Ofsted and our Local Authorities. I would suggest £5 per hour as a minimum for the funded sessions for 3 and 4 year olds in the north of England. We currently receive less than £5 per hour for funded 2 year olds and find it just about sustainable over 15 hours – many childminders feed the children from their own pockets to make sure they have a healthy, nutritious meal. Please remember I am talking about Cheshire east where childcare fees are cheaper than in, for example, the south of England.

Please can the Government recognise the work all early years providers do for very low income and pay us a fair amount for caring for and educating the most vulnerable children. The current situation is bad enough – looking to the future and 30 hours is very worrying. We cannot continue subsidising 30 hours ‘free’ childcare for parents – we have to be sustainable too.

Thank you.
Sarah Neville
Childminder, early years trainer and member of the Ofsted Big Conversation (North West)




Information from one of our Independent Childminder FB group members -

Another thing to think about is if we work with assistant we have to pay minimum wage so at current rate of £6.50 × 30 = £195 but we all know you need to arrive at least 15 minutes before hand for early arrivals and 15 minutes after for late pick ups. So that's extra 2 1/2 hrs on top making total of 32 1/2 hours so £211.25 that's minimum.

Now x what we get off la 3.64 × 30 = 109.20 × 2 = 218.40 so if like me you are only 2 over numbers I've got to feed 2 extra mouths, 2 extra fees for playgroup, 2 extra for resources . All out of £ 7.15 a week extra. Some days I'm only 1 over. On top of this we have to pay for training now.

AND... as another IC group member has pointed out...

If you employ your assistant you also have to pay 13.8% of any wage over £156 per week as employer's national insurance contributions. On your figures that's £7.62. You're now running at a 47p per week loss before you have fed child or bought resources.

Oh and from 1st October minimum wage rises to £6.70!

[moggy]

If you receive funding (free early education money) for 3 and 4 year olds it is important that you respond to this consultation.

...

Well written. Thank you for sharing.

I just wanted to add that I think it is important to respond to this consultation also if your are not receiving funding for 3-4yo- either because of the low £, burdensome admin, LA restrictions, late/incorrect payments from LAs or barriers to offering FE, or other reasons.

I have opted out of the funding because of the shortfall and the pain in the neck admin involved and made that point clear in my responce.

[Mouse]

I agree Moggy. I think it's important that all childminders respond, equally as much those who don't offer funding. The government needs to be aware of their costs and why it's not viable for them to offer 15 hours now, so even less likely that they'll offer 30.

We need to make the government see that childminders do already refuse to offer funding and many more may do so if the level of funding isn't sufficient.

[loocyloo]

I replied giving my annual total income, expenses (listing everything such as training, fees, resources, food etc) and then worked out my hourly income at less than minimum wage.
I then talked about funding. Currently it matches my fees. The minute it doesn't I won't be offering it and I also said that it is unsustainable over the holidays. Especially when it goes to 30hrs week. I also mentioned that as we have no deposit/retainer and don't often get notice of a child leaving-we are usually out of pocket and this will be worse when a funded child leaves.

[Simona]

I am seeking some clarification on this consultation because I too believe it is important that cms contribute as all other research did not include cms in them
All the research provided evidence in terms of figures and why the funding is 'underfunded'.

My understanding is that the DfE wants to know what funding would cover our costs...a figure!
So for instance...if you receive £4 from your LA but you have worked out that £5 is what you need to cover your costs ...how did you arrive at that figure and why?
Nurseries and preschools will include staff wages and training costs...we are not waged but do need to make a profit to survive.

The DfE has also acknowledged that the funding is different from LA to LA...some pay less than our fees, others the same while others above our rate.
It is also worth mentioning in the response the additional costs a LA may impose via their conditions...do they make a difference to your costs?

It is not easy but other providers have had help in this and we need that too.

[sarah707]

There are only 10 days left to reply to this consultation!! Please make sure you add your comments. A childminder has shared her response with us ...

I have been a childminder for 16 years and love my job. I currently offer the free 15hrs to the 3 eligible children I care for but make a loss by doing this. I am struggling to see how I will be able to offer 30hrs but if I don’t it would make financial sense for the parents to look elsewhere for childcare. My L.A has just announced that they will be cutting the funded hour payments from £6.50 to £3.81 by next April which is well below the normal hourly rate that I charge. Since we’re not allowed to add any type of top up payment for these hours, the Government is essentially demanding us to take the loss. The hours are marketed as free to parents but they expect us as providers to subsidise the shortfall in what we are being given. It was hard enough doing this when children were only claiming 15 hours but to double this to 30 hours means we are doubling the shortfall and I can’t see how this can be sustainable for the childcare sector as a whole.

There has been a big drive to raise the qualification levels of staff in Early Years settings which I am fully supportive of. However, this isn’t going to be possible unless the wages on offer are on par with other professional jobs. Despite having a teaching degree and Early Years Professional Status my current net income is below the minimum wage per hour (and that isn’t including the extra hrs of paperwork that I do unpaid).

Having used the calculation tool produced by PACEY I have worked out the cost of providing care per hour per child over the last year in my setting to be £6.57 but this was with me having a take home profit of £5.50 per hr. In order for me to be earning the minimum wage I would need to charge £7.00 per hour per child.

There has been a lot in the press about how expensive childcare places are for parents but I think there is little appreciation of the costs involved such as insurance, data protection fees, training costs, petrol, food, outings, cleaning products, resources and toys, marketing etc. I think parents would be shocked to see our accounts and realise how little of what they pay actually registers as profit.

Most of us who work in the childcare sector do so because we have a passion for children and, whilst that is a positive thing, it has also worked against us because it has meant we’ve put up with the low income and cuts in funding because we care so much for the children. Not many other professionals would work for less than the minimum wage and still continue to give more than 100% in terms of time and effort. The Government has reaped the benefits of this but if the 30hrs is introduced and no increase made to the funding rates, this goodwill won’t be enough for us to continue as settings will be making such a loss that they will either need to close or withdraw from the funding scheme. Either scenario will mean that there will be a shortage of childcare places and that parents will need to pay privately rather than access their free hours.

The only solutions I can see are to either raise the rate per hour which we are paid for funded children or change the entitlement so that the hours aren’t actually free but parents get a set amount of money which can be used against their childcare fees i.e what the government would have paid for the funded hours which we would then deduct from our usual hourly rate on their invoice.

[sarah707]

We also have a questionnaire from Nursery World magazine who are supporting childminders on this one

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/childminder-funding