Hi everyone,

This is my first post here. I'm a newly registered minder and as such I've got places to fill. Ive had four enquiries so far and I'm meeting up with one young mum next week who's looking for a dinnertime Preschool collection and two (or so) hours of minding on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday each week while she attends training supplied through the job centre. Well ive googled Job Centre payments for childcare and it doesn't make pleasant reading: being paid in arrears, late ir non existing payments, blood, sweat and tears spent chasing the Job Centre, Job Centre refusing to deal with CM and only dealing with parents..... The list goes on and on. Thing is that most of the posts Ive found are a little out of date and I'm wondering if the Job Centre have improved of late. Has anyone got any recent experience of dealing with these kinds of payments? Do I have to accept payments in arrears (seems unfair when I'll be asking other customers to pay in advance) or can I name my own terms? And finally with regard to the hours: presumably theyre only gonna pay term time only - can i charge a retainer for term time holidays? And I was thinking of charging a flat half day sessional rate as I will be losing an under 5 full time place during those afternoons - does that sound reasonable or am I being greedy?
Questions! Questions!

Forgive me - I'm a newbie :-/