how do you charge if you offer funded spaces

[newandlearning]

hi.. I'm going to be charging for funded spaces where the 3 year old gets 12.5 hours free education.

I'm wondering for those of you who do this.. do you take off 12.5 hours of childcare from the bill.. or do you reduce the bill but the fee you get from the government?

I'm not sure exactly how to charge?

any please would be great.. thanks a lot!

[mum2two]

I'm hoping to be doing this soon, so will be interesting in what others say.

At playschool, when my kids went, they only had 2.5 hrs free per day, and sessions were 3 hours, so I paid the half hour top up.

I guess I will just deduct the number of hours being used with me from their bill - not the amount I'm getting.

So a child doing 30 hours with me, claiming 12.5 hrs a week funding - parents would be invoiced 17.5 hrs at my hourly rate, during term times.

I believe you get paid termly from the government, so it would be a case of bugeting properly...

x

[yummymummy]

I was under the impression that the reason that some childminder reluctant to offer this is that they aren't allowed to charge the parent any sort of top up fee so irrespective of your charges you just have to accept whatever the rate is the government pays for the 12.5 hrs. i.e if the rate they pay is 3.60 and you charge 4.00 you will be losing 1.00 a day, madness really!
Someone will be along shortly who will know all this for a fact though!

[Jules12Wed]

I have just been accredited and I am claiming nursery funding for a 3 year old girl I have.

I spoke to someone from our Family Information Service who talked me through filling in the form. You have to work out how much you charge per hour and delete that amount from your daily charge. You are paid £3.56 per hour, so depending on how much your hourly rate works out you could be better off or if you charge a high rate you may be worse off but you are not allowed to charge the parent extra to make up your loss.

[Gherkin]

I am an accredited childminder and what I do is the following:

Deduct the amount of hours from the bill hence:

20hr week would see the parent charged for 5 hrs only if they were getting their full 15 hours with me for funded care.

My rate has just gone up so I now charge £3.75 ph for new contracts which is 5pence per hour more than a funded child.