Childminder advice

I think every nursery and childminder is different! My little girl is signed up for two nursery’s due to availability one will only charge for food and any hours over the 30 funded while the other will charge an hour a day after the funded hours even if you are below 30h and I had to book two days with them even though they only had one full day available! I think it is because the funded hours will give them a basic government rate while additional hours are set by them sort of like NHS dentist. I would look at other potential childminders around the area and they may offer different hours and contracts I do think the bank holiday is a little cheeky as your not using the hours during that time but at the same time the person has to be paid and is self employed!

No no no no no! That has alarm bells all over it IMO. Our LO has just started going to the childminder (we signed the contract in Feb) so very recent. He is 7 months today so not entitled to funding until September but I have covered it off with her. When the CM is on holiday we do not pay for this. On 30 hours of funding it works out at 24 hours through the year as they carry the funding over from their holidays. Bank holidays are not charged. Funded hours or covered hours are irrelevant. It is the same hourly rate (£5.50/hour for what we pay). If he is off with illness or if we decide to take him on holiday we still pay for his space/use that weeks funded hours. If we are 15 minutes late or 15 minutes early for pick up or drop off without prior knowledge she will charge an extra hour. Also want to point out that she doesn't charge for feeding them under 1 but it is £3 a day once they turn one. All consumables are to be provided by parents. If you have anymore questions happy to give our view from our CMs x

this is fairly common for childminders. Some other childminders charge a higher daily rate and have unpaid holiday time. Each childminder is an individual business and can choose how they pay themselves, if they want to get paid through the holidays then this is how they do it. Others will take it as unpaid leave and save the money to cover them.

I would say this is about normal. The issue I would have is if suing for bank holidays. But the rest is fair, it’s the reason we went for nursery over CM - we couldn’t do the 6 weeks holiday!

They shouldn’t be charging on top… they get £12 an hour for under twos.. and it goes down after that. But most don’t charge privately more than £8 an hour! X

My childminders allow you to take 2 weeks a year off without paying, they then have 2 weeks holiday where we pay 50% and they shut over Christmas and New year completely but don’t charge for it. We can use our funded hours and they do charge an extra £18 a day. They’re also only open tue- thur so bank holidays don’t apply. I do think all childminders differ though

That sounds like an awful contract. I’d not be happy about that. We don’t pay if our childminder doesn’t work. She doesn’t charge us extra to use the funded hours (as she isn’t allowed to). Id give your Council’s Early Years Team a call/drop an email if there isn’t a number re the £15 surcharge/day for the use of funded hours. At “just” £1k/year difference I’d go for nursery instead.

We’ve used the same childminder for 4 years now and this seems similar. Ours only takes 4 weeks holiday but we do not pay for those weeks. If we take holiday when she’s still working, we do have to still pay. She doesn’t work bank holidays but we still have to pay (if it’s a day that they would normally attend). She does term time only funding which I actually find easier to understand as my eldest goes to nursery where it’s stretched and every invoice is different. But we still attend all year, just the rates change in the holidays. The “top up” charge sounds about right as well (depends on rates and how many hours) - our childminder is £9ph, for ease let’s say funding she’s given £6ph, she needs to make up the £3 difference. In our case for an 8 hour day we’d pay £24. But different ages get different funding (younger kids get more and then it goes down as they get older).

@Nikki-Lee she wouldn’t be allowed to charge you the difference between what she gets from the government and her rate. If her rate is £9/hr and she gets £6 from the government she can’t charge you £3 - she’d have to make a loss on your child. I’d contact your Councils Early Years team for clarification. That’s why the sector as a whole is struggling - the rate they get from government is in many cases much lower than the cost of care - and they can’t charge the difference. She can charge for consumables (nappies/food) but I think the rules around that have/are changing as well.

I only used a childminder when my son was in primary school. They were nice enough but the one thing that sticks out was her saying "oh I can't wait to go to Florida in two weeks" I'm stood there thinking "I'm at work sweating my t*ts off and making every second count and I can't even afford a Pontins break"

This sounds quite normal in our area. My CM has 4 weeks off but I pay 50% for those days. My LO has only 15 hours funded at the moment, but from September she'll get 30 hours. She'll only be using 27, so the CM is banking those hours and spreading them across the weeks I don't get funded. She then charges the difference between what the government pay her and what she charges. Think it'll be like 11 quid bill in total tbh, so its not end of the world for me. I take all the consumables, but if I do forget something it'll never be charged for. Sounds like ita a common practice around the country. I do love having a CM, my LO has come on so much by being surrounded by different age groups/school kids before and after school.

I am currently setting up a childminder and we don’t charge whenever we aren’t open- if you were to go on holiday you would still have to pay as we couldn’t fill that space for the week but for bank holidays, our holiday we wouldn’t charge. Childminders aren’t allowed to charge extra- only voluntary to cover expenses (food/resources ect) are they registered with ofsted? Childminders aren’t always lots cheaper than nurseries however if you think to how many children a childminder has compared to a nursery/staff turn over in nurseries there’s lots of benefits! x

@Johanna yes I know they’re not allowed to charge “top ups” and it’s not invoiced in that way but it is essentially what happens so that childminders cover their losses. I’m not gonna put a lovely care provider out of work because the government funding and process is rubbish. I’m just grateful for everything she does for us to be honest, she can charge us what she likes 😁

We. Z so go)6,.f we re qQWqaqq

They are all very different. Number 4 is pretty standard for nurseries as you are keeping a place open and they have to have staff available they can’t take another child if you decide not to send your child on their contracted day. We use a nursery for our youngest we don’t pay for BH’s at all. We don’t pay for Xmas week which is when they close. Nurseries can also charge top ups on funded days for things like meals although this varies a lot. We use a childminder for our eldest for school holidays only, we confirmed her for all of August but she got in touch and said she needs 2 weeks off for holiday and she isn’t charging us a penny.

I think there's barely any saving with a childminder anymore (there used to be before funded hours came in) but not now. My baby is going to a nursery, firstly because of the above, and also because I have no family nearby, therefore no backup childcare, so I cannot be doing with a childminde that takes 6 weeks holiday a year and I then have to find someone else, nope!