Guest Posted October 14, 2010 Posted October 14, 2010 Now we are all delivering the 15 hours entitlement, I am interested in doing research on what this actually means to your setting and how it affects sustainability and the ability to offer places. For example. I have just realised that if I offer a child 9.00am to 2.00pm at a parents request, that will cover two sessions. A child will loose the opportunity of accessing an afternoon session and I will loose revenue both from receiving only 5 hours of NEG funding instead of 6 and from any top up fees of a paying parent. My fees for a day for Pre-School are £30.00. 5 hours of neg funding only provides me with revenue of £16.70 in my area. That is a loss on a full day paying place of £13.30. Also there is the cost of providing a snack and lunch for the child, and parents don't believe they should have to pay for these as they thing it comes in the entitlement. My other dilema is that our afternoon snack is at 3.30pm. So for children who do an afternoon NEG session of 1.00 to 4.00pm, now have to be given sandwiches or whatever our afternoon snack is. I feel mean asking the parents to pay but what choice do I have. At 3.34 per hour it just doesn't cover it. If you would be interested in taking part in my research then please let me know and we can communicate either on line or through private email. We really need to be producing proper figures and research on the real impact to settings and children.
AnonyMouse_28434 Posted October 14, 2010 Posted October 14, 2010 Hi just a quick reply - i'll try to respond to more another time. Are you a pre school or full daycare? Why is your afternoon snack so late? I would have thought 2/2.30 would be more realistic - are you supposed to be giving the children tea?I know it's difficult when each setting has different ways of running. etc.
Guest Posted October 14, 2010 Posted October 14, 2010 we are a preschool and the neg is slightly over our fees, so we are actually slightly better off and can provide higher staff ratio because of this, we are also non profit so everything has to be "spent" shame some are in this siutation
AnonyMouse_75 Posted October 14, 2010 Posted October 14, 2010 we are a preschool and the neg is slightly over our fees, so we are actually slightly better off and can provide higher staff ratio because of this, we are also non profit so everything has to be "spent" shame some are in this siutation we are in the same position and as soon as the church realised we had more money the rent went up!
AnonyMouse_28922 Posted October 14, 2010 Posted October 14, 2010 We are also slightly better off and in a church hall and our rent also went up! Funny that! Karen
Guest Posted October 14, 2010 Posted October 14, 2010 Our money is going down when the Single Funding Formula comes in. We are on £3.44 at the moment and it will go down to £3.17. I won't survive and am probably going to have to sell. If I trim down my staff some of them will leave as they need the money, if I cut hours they won't earn enough. Feel really fed up after 13 years. I am getting to old to do alot of the physical work so better to go now than later.
AnonyMouse_11396 Posted October 14, 2010 Posted October 14, 2010 Why is yours going down am i missing something here.
AnonyMouse_28922 Posted October 14, 2010 Posted October 14, 2010 That's so sad I really feel for you! Ours has gone up because we are a sessional setting and we were offering 2.5 hour sessions and have now moved to 3 hour sessions to fit the 15 hours in. That extra funding we get for the extra hours we are now offering is more than the extra outgoings (wages etc) so we are better off. We are already on single funding formula and get £3.51 which is a little more than we were getting before SFF. Karen
AnonyMouse_390 Posted October 14, 2010 Posted October 14, 2010 Gosh, you are losing a lot there. we lose 15p per child per hour, so for the 14 week term with 35 children we lose out on £1000. gulp! We get 15 more funded after Christmas too, and our landlords have increased our rent by a third!
AnonyMouse_8466 Posted October 14, 2010 Posted October 14, 2010 We don't know what our Single Funding Formula will be from next year - we will have the final budget by March 1st, apparently. At present we ask for a voluntary donation of £1.40 per day which is the shortfall in funding against our fees, which I have deliberately kept as low as I could for as long as I could. A rent rise at this stage would probably put me out of business, although fortunately my landlord is very understanding. Maz
AnonyMouse_30128 Posted October 14, 2010 Posted October 14, 2010 be careful you are not missing a trick here - if you have funds 'left over' try to sweep the funds into a 'special projects' account - this way it cannot be seen to be part of your profits and may help to keep your rents down
AnonyMouse_75 Posted October 14, 2010 Posted October 14, 2010 be careful you are not missing a trick here - if you have funds 'left over' try to sweep the funds into a 'special projects' account - this way it cannot be seen to be part of your profits and may help to keep your rents down thanks for that
Guest Posted October 15, 2010 Posted October 15, 2010 We've been happy with the 15 hours because it means that our parents can take up more of our sessions, so it helps us to keep high staff ratios. Coincidentally (or not!) we have also just had a rent increase, although our rent is still extremely low, in the spirit of our setting being in a community buildling. £3.17 sounds very low indeed, why is it so low for you? We are now getting £3.53 from the NEG, and it has given us the push we needed to also raise fees to that amount, which has really boosted our income.
AnonyMouse_22106 Posted October 15, 2010 Posted October 15, 2010 As of April 2011 our funding will be going down to £3.11 per hour, so you are not alone.
Guest Posted October 23, 2010 Posted October 23, 2010 Hi just a quick reply - i'll try to respond to more another time. Are you a pre school or full daycare?Why is your afternoon snack so late? I would have thought 2/2.30 would be more realistic - are you supposed to be giving the children tea?I know it's difficult when each setting has different ways of running. etc. We provide a more 'substantial' snack for our children at 3.30pm so even if I moved it to 2.30pm I would still have to be providing a snack for the NEF funded children. If I leave it until 4.00pm, then that is a bit late for some of the children who go at 4.30pm who have paying parents. a no win situation really.
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