Oh wow I’ve just looked at this properly again against the fee rises due to NI contribution rule changes. And when our toddler goes from having 15 to 30 free hours a month, the cost will… go up by £9 a month. - ThreadSky

lottelydia.bsky.social • 59 days ago

Oh wow I’ve just looked at this properly again against the fee rises due to NI contribution rule changes. And when our toddler goes from having 15 to 30 free hours a month, the cost will… go up by £9 a month.

Reposted from Charlotte Lydia Riley

The maths around childcare in this country is so messed up. Found out today that government funding per child place drops between the ages of 2 and 3. So even though on paper the number of free hours doubles, from 15 hours a week to 30 hours a week, our childcare bill goes down by... ten per cent.

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lottelydia.bsky.social•59 days ago

I do not blame our nursery for this at all — they are dealing with rising costs and are paying (at least) london living wage to all their staff. But childcare funding in this country is broken!!!

williamcarruthers.bsky.social•59 days ago

Welcome to hell etc. We will be in exactly the same situation, I think.

williamcarruthers.bsky.social•59 days ago

With our first it became very clear very quickly exactly how small the saving was at this point.

julialaite.bsky.social•59 days ago

I remember talking to Kid the Younger's nursery manager when this first came in and they were like, 'This does not work, at all.' And yeah, they had to put up fees for wraparound care, lunch, etc. And we were lucky in that the nursery even had a 30 hour place! Most around us could not offer them.

ali1m.bsky.social•59 days ago

there are so many idiotic tax traps and cliff edges in the uk and childcare stuff is probably the most egregious example. it should be this hard!

lottelydia.bsky.social•59 days ago

This isn’t even the infuriating (to be fair, now old) policy whereby if your earnings go even slightly over £50k you pay back all your child benefit. This is just: fuck parents.

lottelydia.bsky.social•59 days ago

What is the government’s actual proposed solution to this problem?? How does @teamlabouruk.bsky.social actually think working parents should deal with these costs?? Is the official solution “live near grandparents/have one very high earner and one very part-time worker/put it on a credit card”??

fishplums.bsky.social•59 days ago

ours is going up to full-time next month and I’m dreading our nursery’s price increase announcement, and that’s at a relatively affordable one in Manchester. no idea how people on minimum wage are meant to do it.

lottelydia.bsky.social•59 days ago

Our kid is there 4 days a week and it’s well over a grand a month *with* thirty free hours. And it’s a great nursery and I am grateful to them for everything to do for our kid. And it’s just… impossible.

susannahwalker.bsky.social•59 days ago

Someone said the other day that childcare is infrastructure, and that is so right. It's also infrastructure that creates equity, as it's usually women's careers which get hit, and so they end up with lower salaries, smaller pension pots etc.

ampersandish.bsky.social•59 days ago

This is such a brilliant way to frame - thank you!

pezsez.bsky.social•59 days ago

"live near grandparents/have one very part-time worker" is pretty much what the system expects of you when your kids reach primary school, in my experience. Wraparound care continues to be expensive, and we're regularly asked to come to school events that take place at 2:45pm or whatever

richardcarr.bsky.social•59 days ago

The “free hours” thing does feel like a piece of branding designed to convince the majority without direct specific contact with how it actually works that parents of young kids are getting a much sweeter deal than the reality

lottelydia.bsky.social•59 days ago

Yep this is my conspiracy theory around “free hours” — it’s about defanging campaigns by parents for better state funding for childcare by making the wider population assume that we’re getting tonnes of support already.

luke-minded.bsky.social•59 days ago

Yeah ours went up because free hours didn't include food and the top up "not full time" hours to cover our working hours were much higher rate which put it over the top

phoeberoi.bsky.social•58 days ago

at least one of our local nurseries won’t take children who aren’t using full time hours, if you ask me free hours are as much of a scam as workplaces that give you breakfast & a gym membership as long as you promise not to unionise

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