Government Funding

Hi everyone, I was wondering if there are any childminders in this group, or perhaps parents whose children attend a childminder, who could share their experiences and thoughts on this. We’ve been sending our daughter to a childminder for about a year now, starting when she was just under 2 years old. Since September, we’ve been benefiting from the 15 hours of government funding, which has been a big help. However, in April, our daughter will turn 2, and the funding rate for our childminder will drop (from what I understand, it will go from around £11 per hour to about £8). To compensate for this reduction, our childminder is planning to raise our fees significantly—doubling the amount we were paying when we first started a year ago. She currently looks after 2 children but plans to take on 4 more from May, which has made us wonder: shouldn’t the ability to care for more children help offset the lower government funding? It feels like instead of helping families, the funding changes are driving prices up. I’d really appreciate hearing your thoughts, experiences, or advice about this situation. Has anyone else faced something similar? Thanks in advance!

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But more children is more work. And yes, the funding is lower as they get older so it’s totally understandable that she needs to charge in other areas to make up for this. I’m a childminder and I can tell you, it comes with a lot of additional cost and expense to us (resources, equipment etc) so I can totally understand where she’s coming from x

Can I ask you what you pay now and what you will be paying come April? I use a childminder and wasn't aware of the funding drop. When the 15 free hours for 9months+ was introduced, my childminder put their fees up. There has been no mention of another increase as of yet.

Not a childminder but in nurseries and tbh, it’s the same story there. Funding structure does reduce as they get older and we can only claim between hours of 1-6pm at my setting so any sessions for us which include the morning aren’t funded. Prices had to be hiked up to cover the shortfall as the government doesn’t pay the whole percentage of funding offered to parents to the childcare provider and, especially with more children/more children on funding, the overheads increase. All the parents back in 2023 told me I was delusional for not backing the funding scheme but now they’re all finding out that actually, it’s putting a lot of families in a worse position. X

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