Possible childcare grant top-up?

kymbogs

Hiya,
This is probably going to make me sound like some evil money-grabbing mother but I'd just like to know if there IS more help available or not, the only reason being that I've heard about it somewhere before.
I've just started uni, am still waiting for SFE to tell me how much help towards childcare we are going to get. I've got two toddlers in the college nursery and my fees come to £305 a week.

Although I don't need them to be there full-time at the moment, I have been told the only way to guarentee availability of full-time childcare in the weeks I am on placement in schools is to keep a full-time contract going, which seems fair enough as they have a lengthy waiting list. Also it will allow me to get work done at the library after/before lectures so mostly time at home is family time.

I have made a friend at uni in the same situation with her children in the same nursery and the same age :-) during the summer she spoke to Learner Services and was told some vague information about different things she could apply for and one of those was top-ups for childcare. However we went in to Learner Services last week and without actually taking a minute to ask us what our home situation was we were simply told the only thing they could do was offer a hardship loan till our finance came through. In retrospect she'd probably had a long day of worried skint students coming in asking about money and this was possibly her standard response!

We're going to try again but as getting to Learner Services is a bit of a faff, being in a different location to our campus and our timetable being a bit all over the place at the moment, it would be good to have an idea of what might be out there before going so we can ask for it by name. Alternatively maybe we should try speaking to the advisors from the SU first?

Any advice greatly appreciated
Kimberley x

Oldernotwiser

kymbogs wrote: »

I've just started uni, am still waiting for SFE to tell me how much help towards childcare we are going to get. I've got two toddlers in the college nursery and my fees come to £305 a week.
x

It might be a bit difficult to find out about top up amounts if you don't know how much money you're going to be getting in the first place.

student_advisor

The best bet would normally be the Access to Learning Fund, but this year this is currently being loaned out to students affected by the SFE problems.

If you were my student, I'd need to assess your financial circumstances (i.e. do you live with a partner? have you received any of your other funding through? etc.) I am currently focussing on short-term loans until SFE have made awards, I will then see who qualifies from a grant from us.

Can you email Learner Services instead of going down? Students with us currently have to wait at least 2 weeks for an appointment to see me (unless they are very urgent), but I still answer email queries within a day.

kymbogs

Oldernotwiser wrote: »

It might be a bit difficult to find out about top up amounts if you don't know how much money you're going to be getting in the first place.

Very good point! I'm hoping/expecting to get the £255 max amount allowed with the Childcare Grant for two children. When I originally began looking into the feasibility of going to uni I remember finding a chart somewhere on DirectGov that basically said if your household income is x you will get y and it had all the incomes going up and the grants etc going down, for virtually every aspect of student finance on offer. I've since been unable to find this so assume it was taken down - now everything is very vague saying 'up to' and 'you may get'.

kymbogs

student_advisor wrote: »

The best bet would normally be the Access to Learning Fund, but this year this is currently being loaned out to students affected by the SFE problems..

That makes sense, I have been lucky enough to receive my maintenance loan and grant instalment and really feel for those who haven't! Am still worried with the uncertainty of not knowing exactly how much CG I will get but am fairly certain it will be the full amount allowed. Also I haven't found out how much Parents Learning Allowance I will get but this will help massively. I'm trying to budget and thinking OK I need to pay so much towards the nursery fees but also trying to put some away for the summer when I won't be able to afford childcare to go to work during the week and will be desperately looking for evening/night/weekend work.

I'm not in a huge rush to have this all sorted out but it would be nice to know if potentially there would be some help available if it came to it.

Googling 'childcare grant top-up' has brought up a few uni websites with their own finance sections and saying for instance that everyone who gets the full CG will have their grant topped up to cover the fees but I don't know if this is a common thing or differs from one institution to the next. As I am studying at a college with a 'university centre' the information on the website is very much NOT aimed at degree-level students!