Losing Funding When Children Use Nursery And Presc

[AnonyMouse_3122]

Hope this is the right place to put this. At our preschool children who have a funded place often leave us in the term they are four to go to LEA nursery. What often happens if the parent chooses an afternoon place and their child continues on with us in the mornings. Of course we then only get fees rather than funding which is significantly lower in our case. Does anybody else have this in their setting.

 

Abijac.

[AnonyMouse_4544]

I would imagine this is a problem for many preschools and private nurseries. Parents have told us our local day nursery refuses to bring any nursery aged children to our FSU for this reason. So we have a situation where parents either have to come home to bring afternoon children or pay someone to do this.

[AnonyMouse_3735]

Thsi happened a lot when parents had a free place sooner for their children, but since funding has been extended for 38 weeks we have had much less fo a problem, in fact it has stopped this last year altogether.

 

when it did happen we did increase our fees to much nearer the amount we would get from funding.

 

to be fair we worked out how much each child would have to pay if there was no funding at all and all had to use fees to cover all costs, this is how we worked out a fair sessional rate. (this included wages, rent, equipment, food and drinks, other materials, paint, paper, cleaning, maintainance, stationary postage, etc etc etc.)

 

This came about because fees from funded children should not be used to ofset any losses from other children who pay. It should be used for the intended children only, and other fees should allow the setting to be viable without funding.

 

sorry dont know if that is clear, but the fees children pay should cover all costs involved, and not be subsidised by the funding recieved for other children.

 

Oh dear not much clearer i feel, but I hope you get the gist!!

 

Inge,

Edited March 11, 2006 by Inge

[Guest]

Hi Abijac

We have children who come to us in the morning, pre-school, and go to a local authority nursery in the afternoon. Part of the service we offer is a transfer to two of the LEA nurseries in our area.

I know this is not an ideal situation and many people disapprove of the fact that they are at two settings. But it is an affordable childcare option when compared to private day nurseries.

We have been doing this for about 4 years now and have found it very popular. Our fees are £7 a session, which is not far off the funding we get from our local authority for the grant which is £7.77. We then charge for the extra time they stay for lunch and the transfer.

Linda