Money Moral Dilemma: Should we keep paying childcare fees during the coronavirus outbreak?

brofra

I am a childminder and forced to close, essentially the ability to earn my income stopped the day of the closure. Covea who insures our sector has reneged in any responsibility to cover Covid 19 loss of earnings. We have no recourse to help from the government being self employed.
So, some of the parents agreed at the time (unknown term at the time) but I think this generosity will wane once it’s known that we are potentially talking about 5 months rather than 1 month. The kindness and loyalty shown by these parents is heartening but they are under no obligation and if they cannot afford to pay for a service they’re not receiving, then the government should be looking after the small self employed people too. I’m hopeful! 

dtrain

If they are employed staff then they should be claiming under the government scheme. If they are a self employed childminder they will be in a really tricky situation... And Universal Credit will only be worth £94/week. 
Were in a similar situation but with a dog walker. Partner says wait and see what the Govt off self employed people, because we don't know how long this will go on for if we say we'll pay. I'm of the view of offering to pay but reviewing at the end of the 3 weeks this lockdown is meant to last for.

Hel31

I am a childminder, I am also a single mum. My policies don't cover anything of this kind so technically I can't charge my parents even though most of them will be receiving 80% of their pay and will still be receiving their childcare element of any benefits. The news, yesterday sounded as if the self employed will be able to claim 80% of their income. Childminders have allowances they can claim, so if they use previous tax returns to calculate the claim figure, childminders will loose out.... my best year I had an income of £15k because of the allowances on paper I earned £7k! Hopefully, in Government there is someone fighting our corner. Meanwhile I am looking after a keyworkers child (not charging them because I don't feel it is ethical when I'm not charging the other parents for sitting safely in their own homes) so I can't even go out and try to get a job at Aldi because whilst they were working out who should close those jobs are now all taken. I can not claim Statutory Sick Pay, I could not claim this when I had my hysterectomy last year and had to close for 8 weeks. As parents when you are making all those claims about whether you can pay or not, think long and hard.... do you really need them. There are some real people in real need and if you have savings why not be prepared to use them for a while (that's what it looks like I'm going to have to do.... no holiday for us again).... the Government and Insurance companies do not have unlimited funds... companies will fold. 

Ruth7890

I am a 85 place day nursery with 26 staff based in Wales. I am not in the leisure, tourism or retail industry and not eligible for the support grants they are offering as we do not fall into any catergory. We also do not lay business rates so ineligible for the grant. 
I also do not think it is morally right to charge parents, seven local nursery’s have closed. We still have all our general overheads.
The support for wages is fantastic and I am grateful but it is only 80%.
My staff are like my family. 

The government needs to help our category for support.
Nurserys have been struggling for years, now we will close with no hope of reopening. 

Please help us Martin! 

Jeremy535897

gilesfitzh said:

Please be sure to differentiate between Nurseries and Childminders.   My wife and I are Registered childminders.  We have been told to stop working.   We are a 'partnership' in the eyes of HMRC rather than a registered business so most of what the Chancellor has said doesn't apply to us.   Fortunately we are both pensioners and 2 x basic state pension means that we will manage though the loss of earnings, about £5k p.a. between us will be missed.   Other, younger, childminders however will likely have no income for the duration so please bear this in mind.  Thank-you.

Could you be eligible for pension credit?

claire_harris1

Ruth they updated the rate relief etc a few days ago to include nurseries along with leisure etc.

common_sense321

Whilst meaning no offence and purely playing devil's advocate as I can see this from both sides.  When choosing to become a childminder (or any self employed) you are aware the financial risk is on you. If you were off sick you do not get sick pay, you don't get paid holidays but the benefits must outweigh these risks. Although these are unprecedented times, in reality it is the same situation.  If this was anything else and you have no savings to cover the rainy days then why should someone else have to use their savings to cover you? You wouldn't expect it if you were off sick so should it be expected now? That's assuming parents have savings many are living hand to mouth and losing money themselves over this. On the flip side if it were to put you out of business people would probably be willing to help. Reading other people's comments on this topic there seems to be an underlying expectation of hand outs and what about me. Most people I think most people would be happy to help where they can but there seem to be some aggressive demands around.

nancy_c_b

I think you should come to some arrangement to maybe pay half of what you would normally pay, if you can afford to. We use both a pre-school and a childminder. Both will still get the local council funding as we claim 30 free hours. The pre-school have offered to refund us for the rest of this term or waive the refund as a donation to their costs. We chose to waive it but it's only £30. Our childminder has asked that we pay for this month and next month as normal, and we agreed my childcare voucher amount of £243/month was roughly average what we pay her so we'll do that for now then re-assess after April. Luckily we both still have jobs where we can work from home but who knows how our industries will be affected in 6 months?

common_sense321

Bear in mind for some of us childcare for one child is £1000+ per month. This is a lot to be expected to still pay out! This is for a nursery that will also be making a profit on that amount in normal circumstances. A compromise where costs not supported by the government are covered would be a better solution. Our nursery have asked for one months of fees to shore their cash flow up in the first month but then nothing for the following months. This seems reasonable to me. 

tommyedinburgh

Our daughter who is four goes to a wonderful childminder for after nursery care Mon-Thur and Wednesday AM as she is not in nursery that day. When things started to look like it was getting serious with regards COVID we approached her to say that we would be paying in full for as long as it went on. Sadly she told us that her two other families handed in their 'notice' with a view of resuming care once it was all done with. I know for a fact that other families have approached her to care for their children. Ultimately the two families that handed in their notice may well now be without childcare when all this is done.

I couldn't sleep at night knowing that my child would have to move from a wonderful carer to the unknown, so for that reason our savings will be used to pay during COVID if we lose out on any income.