30 hours free childcare? what does it mean for CMs?

[mumofone]

Just as the title says, is this a bad thing for us CM's in that parents will choose this over using a CM. Should we offer the 30 hours at the 4.50 rate the government are paying (i think?!), i really need to read up on this....

[sarah707]

It has a long way to go before it's law and PLA are very vocal on our behalf

Childcare Expo - Alliance comments on government childcare plans following the Queen

[Simona]

Just as the title says, is this a bad thing for us CM's in that parents will choose this over using a CM. Should we offer the 30 hours at the 4.50 rate the government are paying (i think?!), i really need to read up on this....

I wouldn't offer it yet as it is not set in stone or in legislation...it has to be passed by Parliament and in the C&Families Act.
I am sure you will hear a lot about it but it won't happen until 2017...or so the govt has promised
it was just an election gimmick....the Tories outdoing Labour by 5 hours!

IF it was properly funded it would be a good idea but it is only for working parents...not sure if it applies to single working parents but we will soon find out

I am sure it will be debated at the PLA conference next week and beyond!

[mumofone]

Really sorry to sound stupid guys but what's the pla?

[mumofone]

I wouldn't offer it yet as it is not set in stone or in legislation...it has to be passed by Parliament and in the C&Families Act. I am sure you will hear a lot about it but it won't happen until 2017...or so the govt has promised it was just an election gimmick....the Tories outdoing Labour by 5 hours! IF it was properly funded it would be a good idea but it is only for working parents...not sure if it applies to single working parents but we will soon find out I am sure it will be debated at the PLA conference next week and beyond!

Working parents are my customers though so I don't want them to go elsewhere...

[Simona]

Working parents are my customers though so I don't want them to go elsewhere...

Most of our children have working parents and we can care for those where, for instance, dad is at work but mum stays at home.
The 15 hours is a universal offer not the 30 hours.
I was trying to distinguish between the govt offer to working parents only while Labour offered 25 hours to ALL children regardless.....so all had a chance of good quality early education.
The free offer is for 'early education' although it is called free childcare

While it all sounds very easy there are many barriers the govt has not looked into as yet and I know providers are already asking questions.
As a cm you are more likely to be able to offer 30 hours than a preschool which rents a premises for a short period of time and cannot rent more.
Nurseries will be able to offer it too but they also need to expand.

We have a couple of years to listen and participate in all the coming debates.....stay tuned!

[sarah707]

Really sorry to sound stupid guys but what's the pla?

Pre-school learning alliance

[bunyip]

Just as the title says, is this a bad thing for us CM's in that parents will choose this over using a CM. Should we offer the 30 hours at the 4.50 rate the government are paying (i think?!), i really need to read up on this....

Beware of politicians' (ab)use of figures. The £4.50 will go from central government funds to your LA. The figure the LA pays you may be a lot lower than £4.50. Effectively, the CMs on the scheme are raising money for the LAs at a rate of about 75p ph/child.

LA's reserve the right to cream off a chunk of he funding money to administrate the scheme.

CMs, OTOH, are forbidden by LAs' funding rules from charging an admin fee, signing-up fee, etc. etc. to children of parents on the scheme. Fairness - well there's another "British Value", eh?

[mumofone]

Beware of politicians' (ab)use of figures. The £4.50 will go from central government funds to your LA. The figure the LA pays you may be a lot lower than £4.50. Effectively, the CMs on the scheme are raising money for the LAs at a rate of about 75p ph/child. LA's reserve the right to cream off a chunk of he funding money to administrate the scheme. CMs, OTOH, are forbidden by LAs' funding rules from charging an admin fee, signing-up fee, etc. etc. to children of parents on the scheme. Fairness - well there's another "British Value", eh?

Interesting thanks bunyip, is this what currently happens for those offering funded places too? How do CMs afford to do it then and why do they do it?

Where's the 75p from?

Sorry maths was never a strong point!!

[Simona]

Watch this clip with PLA CEO commenting on the 30 hours after the Queen's speech and also the clip before the election with a parent who hits the nail on the head about 'free' childcare

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0Vs...ature=youtu.be

[AliceK]

Interesting thanks bunyip, is this what currently happens for those offering funded places too? How do CMs afford to do it then and why do they do it?

Where's the 75p from?

Sorry maths was never a strong point!!

What your LA gets per hour isn't what they pay you per hour. My LA is one of the lowest paying in the country, if I were to offer funded 3/4 yr places they would pay me £3.07 per hour. That isn't what they get from government though. They get a lot more that that. Considering my hourly rate is £4.00 I am then subsidising the "free" childcare by 93p per child per hour. Which is why I can't offer the funded hours. I simply can't afford to do it.

xxx

[bunyip]

Interesting thanks bunyip, is this what currently happens for those offering funded places too? How do CMs afford to do it then and why do they do it?

Where's the 75p from?

Sorry maths was never a strong point!!

For every hour of 3-4yo "free" childcare I provide, the LA draws £4.51 from the State, from which it pays me £3.77. The LA keeps the difference of 74p.

I said 75p because that's as near as dammit is to dommit and the precise 74p sounds a bit odd.

Yes, this already happens.

The Tory regime has yet to say how the general shortage of childcare places will be solved by offering to under-pay providers for twice as many hours as they already underpay us.

I'm sure that somewhere in the bowels of the Dept for Education (ha "Education" - another bad joke ) the following converation has already taken place;-

"

So, how do we encourage more people to open childcare businesses and thereby create more childcare places?"

"How about we offer to pay them less.?"

"Great idea, have an OBE and we'll run with that one."

Answer to your question: how do CMs afford to do it? = Barely

Answer to your question: why do CMs afford to do it? = Probably a mixture of pressure, fear (of losing out to other setting that do offer "free" childcare) and the usual reason why we all bend over and drop our knickers for parents - we're just that stoopid.

[bunyip]

What your LA gets per hour isn't what they pay you per hour. My LA is one of the lowest paying in the country, if I were to offer funded 3/4 yr places they would pay me £3.07 per hour. That isn't what they get from government though. They get a lot more that that. Considering my hourly rate is £4.00 I am then subsidising the "free" childcare by 93p per child per hour. Which is why I can't offer the funded hours. I simply can't afford to do it.

xxx

A lot of settings are already in this position. A lot more are reconsidering whether than can continue to offer "free" childcare if it is doubled. Others will go with it but be forced to cut costs somewhere.

Some will no longer be allowed to offer any "free" hours unless there are significant changes to local rules. Example: many preschools only open for mornings. They are frequently in rented rooms at church halls or community centres which are already hired out for the afternoon to the carpet bowls club, Little Prancers' music 'n' movement class, or Fat Club. Our LA will only pay funding to providers who offer the full entitlement. So, how does a preschool offer 30 hours "free" care when it only opens for 15 hours a week? Answer, it doesn't ................... and it loses all funding, and therefore may lose its clients and have to close.

So the net result of political promises of "more free childcare" could well result in "less free childcare" (ie. fewer childcare places in total.)

When we've settled all this, I remain at a loss as to why doubling the "free" hours for 3-4's is preferable to simply extending the 15 "free" hours to 1-2yo's. The current 'solution' is absolutely no help to mums seeking to return to work after maternity. I'm considering recouping my losses by offering a Birth Certificate forgery service to supply new mums with documents which are backdated by a couple of years (...come on, think about it. )

It would, of course, be very "negative" of me to suggest this has more to do with focus groups, and the gullibility of the electorate, and far less to do with families and reality.

[TinyTinker]

Our LA now only pay £3.30 p/h for 3-4 year funded hours! so a lot of childminders in my area whose hourly rate is higher than this have already stopped offering funded places!

[Simona]

Our LA pays £3.60 now...from £3.50 which had been set in stone since 1997....the local fee varies a lot but I know that some charge around £7...some less some even more.

Our LA is creaming off a lot more than 75 pence as in Bunyip's case...for many it is 50%

This is the guide for funding for 2 year olds for 2015/2016
https://www.gov.uk/government/upload...15_to_2016.pdf

There is a toolkit that allows you to compare what you get for 3/4 year olds against neighbouring LAs but I cannot locate it.

Mumofone...in order for providers to sustain our business, based on what we have forecast we need to have a small profit, we charge fees to return some sort of turnover that allows expenses and legitimate costs to be taken account of and have a small profit....some cms keep that profit low so they do not lose Tax Credits.

You ask what it means for CMs...it means that we need to charge more for the 'non funded' hours as most of the sector does...we set sessions and include this and that to recover the loss....even the govt has got that message now

The rest of the sector is warning that unfunded hours will go up even more...so CMs must really reflect as many are very resistant to raising fees...bear in mind parents do get lots of help towards childcare fees....while others who do not work are penalised....strange system we have!

Bunyip is also right about the charities putting pressure on the govt to help 'hard working families' even more ...but they seem to have concluded that providers are not hard working.
It has been a huge step in making them stop referring to 'free' childcare as it is not...see Family and Childcare Trust as they drop the 'free'...and also look at 4Children...being hugely funded by the DfE means they have to publicise govt policy regardless!

I also agree it would have been better to give the under 3s equal 'free' hours...not just those working families chosen by Cameron....he gave them more childcare on one hand but will take away child benefits? where is the logic?


Having said all that this govt has to be made to realise they have troubled the cost of childcare, thrown money to the wind but never tackled the real reason for the increase in fees....talk about going round in blinkers!

[FussyElmo]

Or the other side to the argument is mumtoone without knowing your rates and what the las pay.

Is you will get close or maybe even a little more than your hourly rate. Those parents then can access 30 hours of funded childcare/education. You get payed from the la so no (well rarely any issues with the payments) payment issues/excuses of tax credits etc.

So happy parents, happy childminders :-)

[bunyip]

I'm amazed that none of the Tory economic think-tanks have considering how this could progress in terms of cause-and-effect, not to mention The Law of Unintended Consequences.

Let's say 3-4yo's will get 30 hours pw. Under-3's continue to get no support (except the "disadvantaged" 2yo's). Rates paid to CMs remain stagnant.

First up, some 3-4yo's parents will opt for 30 hours care pw, only to get a shock when they have to pay for 30 hours' worth of holiday-time (unfi=unded) care.

As Simona suggests, settings will be obliged to offset the increased level of under-funding by increasing the £rates for paid-for hours. This, together with the likely fall in the number of childcare places (see my earlier post) will have a disproportionate impact on the parents of under-3's. And this will make it far harder for new mums to return to work.

It could almost be a policy designed to hinder women returning to the workplace. Any mum deferring her return to work until her child is 3yo will probably find things have moved on in her field of career, and struggle to find a job of similar status. (OMG, I just became a feminist intellectual. )

That's before we even address the question of which parents actually need most help with childcare costs. Being a universal entitlement is all very well, but it does mean that the rich get unneccessary support and the poor get less than they need. Is this sort of 'help' really necessary for the likes of Waity-Katy and the other Palace scroungers, churning out their appalling sprogs for the entertainment of the gutter press?

[Simona]

This article is one of the best I have read so far on the issue.

Queen's Speech: lots of promises, but challenges ahead on childcare

[rickysmiths]

I'm amazed that none of the Tory economic think-tanks have considering how this could progress in terms of cause-and-effect, not to mention The Law of Unintended Consequences.

Let's say 3-4yo's will get 30 hours pw. Under-3's continue to get no support (except the "disadvantaged" 2yo's). Rates paid to CMs remain stagnant.

First up, some 3-4yo's parents will opt for 30 hours care pw, only to get a shock when they have to pay for 30 hours' worth of holiday-time (unfi=unded) care.

As Simona suggests, settings will be obliged to offset the increased level of under-funding by increasing the £rates for paid-for hours. This, together with the likely fall in the number of childcare places (see my earlier post) will have a disproportionate impact on the parents of under-3's. And this will make it far harder for new mums to return to work.

It could almost be a policy designed to hinder women returning to the workplace. Any mum deferring her return to work until her child is 3yo will probably find things have moved on in her field of career, and struggle to find a job of similar status. (OMG, I just became a feminist intellectual. )

That's before we even address the question of which parents actually need most help with childcare costs. Being a universal entitlement is all very well, but it does mean that the rich get unneccessary support and the poor get less than they need. Is this sort of 'help' really necessary for the likes of Waity-Katy and the other Palace scroungers, churning out their appalling sprogs for the entertainment of the gutter press?

They pay their Taxes the same as we do and I suspect they pay a darn sight more in a year than I will in a lifetime! Anyway most of them won't qualify for the additional 15 hours because Mum doesn't work.

[bunyip]

Or the other side to the argument is mumtoone without knowing your rates and what the las pay.

Is you will get close or maybe even a little more than your hourly rate. Those parents then can access 30 hours of funded childcare/education. You get payed from the la so no (well rarely any issues with the payments) payment issues/excuses of tax credits etc.

So happy parents, happy childminders :-)

That's true. The payments are guaranteed and consistent. We're quite lucky in that we get 70% at the start of term and the balance well before the end of term, so the payments never fall into arrears.

I do have other worries, though, and none of these seem to be mentioned in this morning's media flurry.

How much of a shock will it be to parents when they get a bill for 30 hours' (non-funded) care in the holidays?

If we end up increasing our fees in general to cover the funded hours shortfall, how fair is that? The 3-4yo's will effectively be subsidised by the other parents: especially any 3-4yo's who are TTO.

How much value will fully-funded families out on the service. There is a natural propensity for people not to value anything they get for free. I know settings who have terrible problems with fully-funded children who just don't turn up because mum and dad have taken them out on a trip and not bothered to tell nursery/preschool/CM. And when questioned, they just don't get it.

It makes the setting's position very precarious. What's to stop a fully-funded family walking away with no notice? They don't pay fees, so 4 weeks' contracted notice is meaningless. The setting is left with a gaping vacancy to fill immediately or a big loss of revenue. I know nurseries and a preschool who already suffer from this with just 15 hours funded. When there are 30 hours, it will cover more families and be more damaging to lose them like this.