Bit confused.

“So in fact the only group who will benefit properly under the new scheme are parents of 0-2 year old children.”

Don’t we care about them? I went back to work when my son was six months old. Nursery cost £50 a day. Eighteen months of help with that would have made a significant difference to our finances, and saved us thousands of pounds.

Not enough to make me vote Tory, but it would have been very very much appreciated.

Will the new scheme be for 52 weeks of the year, unlike the 38 free weeks currently?

There are a lot of 0-2 year olds too so it’s not exactly an empty promise.

I’m having a bit of trouble working out what “disadvantaged” means, in relation to the provision for two year olds. Our childcare costs are currently covered by tax credits anyway, and before our eldest started school, hers were covered by the 15 free hours. We are getting very nervous about tax credit cuts, however, as the childcare to cover my husband travelling to work, doing a shift and travelling home costs more than he earns.

I think a lot of trouble comes from the general public not understanding welfare benefits – people seem to think that tax credits are simply a refund of some of the tax you pay, whereas for families like ours, they are our main income – they top up wages to an amount where a family can meet thier costs. I have literally no idea how we would live without minimum wage and tax credits.

Rhian

It’s a fair point you make, but that’s because my article has been edited down from my original at http://thoughcowardsflinch.com/2011/10/08/examining-the-governments-smoke-and-mirrors-announcement-on-childcare/ and has lost the rest of the para in question, which reads:

‘So in fact the only group who will benefit properly under the new scheme are parents of 0-2 year old children. This would be fine, except that we already know that the number of parents seeking care for this younger age group is proportionately much smaller than for the 2-4 year age group. (For example, the most recent Lancashire Childcare Sufficiency Assessment (p.40) found only 4,344 childcare places for 0-2 year olds, compared with 24, 206 places for 2-4 year olds.)’

So in answer to your question – no, I’m definitely not saying that parents of 0-2yr olds don’t count, and this is a good concession by those who campaigned. What I am saying is that statistically this group is much smaller than the parent group with older children. In addition, by the amount you were paying I’d judge that you were working more than 16 hours per week, and this group of (lower income) working parents suffered most when Working Tax Credits were cut in April 2011.

Overall, i’m not sure where the govt get its figure of 80,000 parents helped from, but suspect it’s inflated for the reasons given.

Hope that’s clear.

Earwicga @2: As in my other reply to Rhian, I’m not saying the announcement is entirely without benefit, and it is a good concession for some people. All I’m saying is that the move doesn’t look particularly well thought through as it will not assist a whole group of people that it seems to be professing to help, while (as also pointed out) doing nothing at all to assist those like Rhian who want to/need to work more than 16 hours.

Alicia @3: I’m not surprised you’re having trouble, as the government doesn’t seem to know either. The roll out guidance suggest they (in this case the Dof E) suggests they are still struggling with this, and looking at some kind of Helath Visitror referral system as one method, though I can’t see that working. When Clegg re-announced all this last year (from the earlier Labour scheme) he seemed to suggest that it would be on the basis of Free School Meals eligibility, but perhaps didn’t realise that for children who haven’t gone to school yet this may be tricky (not to mention major issues around undeclaiming on FSMs).

I agree entirely. Maybe something based on FSM or tax credits (eg the boundary for a lot of things is at around the £15,000 a year income mark, which tbh is well above what a family with one member on full time minimum wage would be earning) could work, but we do already have a mechanism for funding childcare for families on a low income, and it is called tax credits. Can we not just change the criteria slightly to remove the 16 hours requirement? Seems daft to add another level of means testing. Either make it universal, or put it with existing means testing.

Are parents of children aged 0-2 really the ony ones who’ll benefit? What about parents with school-age children working outside school hours – will they be eleigible to claim?

Alicia –

“I think a lot of trouble comes from the general public not understanding welfare benefits – people seem to think that tax credits are simply a refund of some of the tax you pay, whereas for families like ours, they are our main income”

You’re absolutely right about this. The number of people who say “what’s the point of taxing people and then giving their own money back to them?”, as if that’s all tax credits do. This is one of the major misconceptions that has allowed the Coalition to sell raising the tax threshold as the best way of boosting the incomes of low-to-middle income households. The reality is that the tax credits system does a far better job of ‘lifting people out of tax’ – and then some – and without the waste involved in handing £10 billion plus in tax cuts to people who are not even in that supposed target group.

GO @8:

Also from the original pre-edit piece (not my editing, I hasten to add):

“Similarly, there might be an argument that this move is in some way targeted at parents of school-age children so that they can work outside of school hours (for example, in a 8am to 11am job which means they need to use a breakfast club), but there would be much more effective ways of doing this (not least given the lack of breakfast clubs in most schools).”

So yes, again I recognise that there will be some benefit here, especially for early morning workers, but again it’s only round the relative margins. As noted, I’m not against the benefits campaigned for, but just wanted to point out that what is actually being offered is somewhat less than what’s on the tin,

And yes, agreed with you both on the tax credit conceptions.

One problem not widely known is that the ‘free’ 15 hours that parents are entitled to claim under NEG are not always available, or at least are not as ‘free’ as people might expect, due to nurseries adding various charges. Genuinely free places are few and far between. This is because the nurseries believe that the hourly rate at which they are reimbursed through the NEG (this year it’s £3.48 per hour) is an unrealistic figure for covering their costs. Local Authorities have the power to withhold the grant to nurseries who do not offer the free hours to which parents are entitled, but they would never do it because the nurseries would close down. Nurseries will claim that they would have to close down anyway if they gave 15 free hours to everyone, as the grant is too meagre to cover the cost of this.

All the govt need to do to make sure the existing free childcare is genuinely free is to increase the hourly rate for the NEG to a realistic figure, then direct LA’s to crack down on nurseries who still apply charges, which I suspect would be much cheaper than this new ‘commitment’.