Ultimately, I agree that each CM can and should set their own fees.
That is exactly why I find it disappointing that the vast majority of CMs enter self-employment with the notion that they have to conform to some sort of 'norm' of what everyone else does. No offence to the OP, but it's tiresome to see "what should I do?" "what does everyone else do?" over and over again, ad nauseum.
To their shame, a lot of the advice coming from DOs, pacey, etc. has perpetuated this idea. Such organisations really ought to get a grip and begin to understand what "self employment" means. They claim we need to look at what everyone else is charging so as to "be competitive". The reality is that the average gets constantly dragged down to the level of the lowest. So, high-quality provisions end up being forced to charge at or near the same rates as the barely-adequate CM down the road who shoves 6 children in front of the tv with a bowl of Value Beans whilst s/he gets on with the ironing. As I've said previously, this also gives LAs just the statistic basis they need to keep paying sub-standard levels for funded childcare.
What I really can't abide is when these 'norms' are taken to extremes and people suggest we have to follow them. This is possibly why I'm regularly on my soapbox about the whole thing. It's the main reason why I left my local CM group. They operate as a sort of cartel-come-mafia, where you have to comply, use the same fees policy, charge extra for unworked time/holidays/meals/this/that/the other - or else you're regarded as undercutting, poaching or stealing 'their' business. They couldn't actually throw you out of the group for refusing to comply, but they did make several people like me so unwelcome and ostracised that we simply voted with our feet and left. Shamefully, the group was overseen/led by an LA/pacey-staff DO who sanctioned all this bad practices by drawing them up as a members' "code of conduct".
I agree charging for unworked time is not a moral issue. But I have absolutely no sympathy with the sort of CMs whose paths I cross who deliberately continue with something that alienates their potential customers whilst simultaneously complaining they can't attract customers. There are times when the "taking up a space" argument holds water, but a lot of the time it means "I'm just going to charge you and not bother to look for anyone else." There are CMs near me who only charge for the full week, because a part-time child is "taking up a space". They cannot understand why they can't get clients to pay for 5 days and use only 3 of them. I've mentioned before a CM friend of mine who has the children of 2 contract cleaners whilst her other mindees are at preschool. It took her some time to realise she was still charging the mums of the nursery children full rate because she "couldn't fill the space"
but she actually had filled the spaces.
I agree that each CM needs to find a way to spread the fixed and variable costs of the business across the users of the service. That is precisely why I fail to understand why Childcare is so different from 99.999999999999999999% of other self-employed businesses. The normal self-employed thing to do is to work out a fee (cost of labour) for all work done, 'dead time' (including holidays/bank holidays, running costs, trade subscriptions, etc, etc,
the lot. They then use this figure, together with a notion of how much money they need to make from doing the work and present a simple figure when they price up a contract. Hence the sparky who rewires a house in 8.5 days charges labour for 8.5 days. He doesn't charge you for 9 because he hasn't troubled to line up a half-day's work somewhere else. Neither does he pop round with a bill when he goes on holiday: he's already factored into his usual costs the fact that he needs to eat for 52 weeks of the year even if he only works 48 of them.
If we could do something similar, we'd all save ourselves a lot of problems and maybe, just maybe, stop dragging our income down to the lowest common denominator.
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