Finding child care is one of those things that’s easier said than done. There are so many things that need to be taken into consideration that you don’t really think about until you have chosen a child care provider and then they throw all these curve balls at you. So, I’m going to give you a list of things that should help you with your search for a child care provider:
1. First things first, research help you might be entitled to. If your income is under a certain amount or you are receiving particular benefits, your child may be entitled to free hours or help towards childcare costs (link at the bottom of the page). You can also speak to a finance advice service if you are really struggling. Some local community centres and libraries have free finance advice drop-in sessions, alternatively you can also contact the Citizens Advice Bureau (link at the bottom of the page).
2. If you are able to, write a list of things that are important to you. For example, support with weaning, outdoor space, flexible hours, etc and then make sure you discuss these things with potential childcare providers. Of course, you have to be practical with your list, if your list has 100 things on, you may struggle to find somewhere that accommodates everything you are asking for. Try just picking out 3-5 key things that you feel you & your child would really benefit from
3. Type of provider - Decide on the type of child care provider you want I.e. a nursery or a childminder. I found the best way to do this is to look at the pros and cons of different types of child care providers. For example, childminders may offer more flexible hours than nurseries, but nurseries will always have staff to cover if another staff member is ill. Figure out which cons you are able to manage.
4. Questions - One of the most difficult parts is figuring out the right questions to ask, try and think back to your list and figure out questions based on some of your key points. Some that I would recommend are: ask if you can have a tour of the place, ask if your child can try a settling in session, ask about what the routine of the day is and what sorts of activities they do with the children, do they take them on trips? Etc. It can be quite difficult to remember all the questions you want to ask when you go for a tour, so it can be useful to email over a list of questions beforehand and that way then you can just fully concentrate on the tour
5. Hidden extras! - This is one of my pet peeves with childcare providers as this is where I have been blindsided the most. Many child care providers will answer all of the questions above, allow you settling in sessions and then once you are all ready to go and you have given your start date, they will suddenly hit you with all of these hidden extras. For example, when my children first started nursery, I had worked all of the costs out – being a single parent, I counted every penny! - to make sure that I could afford it. My son was entitled to free hours and was going to have packed lunches so I had worked out that I was only going to need to pay for my daughter...however, once he started, I was informed that as I was using funded hours for my son, it was part of their policy that I had to pay for him to have meals there, whether he ate them or not. This was not something I was informed of when I first registered them both. Another hidden extra is flexibility. I would highly recommend that if you are studying check if they accommodate for students, by making sure they will allow you to alter your days/hours when your timetable changes each term, as this is something not all child care providers will allow.
6. Terms & conditions – following on from my last point in regards to hidden costs, one way you can eliminate being ripped off is by make sure you read the all of the terms and conditions, something which looking back now I wish I had of done. For example, the free hours scheme that the government run, these free hours are only for 38 weeks of the year. So basically, they are only available for you to use during term time, if you want to send your child to nursery during the school holidays you will have to pay for this. Most child care providers will offer something known as the stretch option where you can stretch these hours over the entire year (including holidays) and you just pay a little extra each month to cover the weeks where you are not entitled to the free hours. This was something that I did not find out until after my children had started nursery!
7. Students – if you are studying, childcare can be a little trickier as the government, in most cases will offer you little to no support at all. I was given extremely bad advice from the job centre when I first went back to university after having my son. I was informed that as I was in receipt of universal credit, I could claim up to 85% of my child care costs back. I started university in the September and it took them until January to finally inform me that actually I wasn’t entitled to any help towards my childcare costs as I was studying and not working! The worst part of all of this was that I had actually turned down the opportunity to claim help towards childcare costs from my university because I thought the job centre would be helping me! So, from experience I would recommend you talking to your college or university and trying to seek help with childcare through them rather than the job centre. Most places will usually have finance & debt advice professionals located within the college or university.
8. My final piece of advice, is probably the most important and that is to trust your instincts. You know your child better than anyone and even if a childcare provider has everything you need, if your gut doesn’t feel right, then don’t choose them!
I hope this has been useful, feel free to ask me any questions and I will try my best to answer them for you. I have left the links below for some of the things I mentioned in my discussion:
https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/
https://www.gov.uk/30-hours-free-childcare
Please feel free to add any tips of your own on finding the right childcare.