27/02/2025
Please read its a long one but so important to get everyone onboard to understand what the government are doing to us in the early years sector.
Everyone has a family member, friend etc accessing childcare 😔
Who else would be self employed and be waiting for income from the Local Authority and being dictated to its ridiculous!......
You may well have seen that the Government are pushing for the funded childcare to be "free" again, despite the efforts of the industry to demonstrate that they are underfunded so unaffordable. Here is an analogy that helps make the situation more understandable. Please share, as it is important that the Early Years industry be allowed to continue to support you in caring for your children, and reducing (not removing) your childcare bills:
· Government decides every child under 5 is entitled to 15 (or 30) FREE portions of bread, milk, fruit & veg per week, from all supermarkets, large and small.
· Supermarkets aren't consulted about this and feel backed into a contract written by the local authority. Each LA can edit the contract as they wish.
· Government tells parents this food is all freeeeee! They don’t explain that it’s only for 38 weeks of the year, or that for the other 14 weeks they get nothing.
· Parents apply for a code to get the free food, but supermarkets unexpectedly find themselves burdened with all the admin of checking codes are valid, chasing parents for forms and claiming the funds. No financial assistance is provided to the supermarkets for the extra costs incurred by this work.
· Supermarkets have to stretch the 38 weeks of 15 (or 30) portions across the year, making 11 (or 22) portions per week. Parents don’t understand this and bombard the supermarkets with emails demanding to know why little Cordelia is only getting 11 free portions when she should be getting 15.
· Government pays £1 of funding per portion for the free food, knowing full well it doesn’t cover the cost. Tesco, Morrisons and Sainsburys say it will cost them £2 per portion to deliver the entitlement and ask for an increase in the funding. Government ignores the supermarkets and continues to underfund the scheme, expecting the supermarkets to absorb the shortfall out of their own pockets.
· Supermarkets decide they must charge the parents the £1 per portion difference, a bit like a top-up.
· Government tells the supermarkets they’re not allowed to charge a top-up, and that any charge has to be voluntary for the parent.
· Supermarkets change the amount they charge to £1.20 per portion to avoid it being a top-up, and call it ‘ingredient supplement’.
· Parents bombard the supermarkets with complaints about the £1.20 charge, demanding it should be free. Some parents report the supermarkets to government bodies.
· Supermarkets are forced to invent ridiculous rules for parents who don’t want to pay the ingredient supplement. Some parents try to sue supermarkets claiming their rules are illegal.
· Supermarkets have now become despised across the nation as money-grabbers.
· Checkouts apply the funding as parents pay for their shopping. Some parents don’t want the bread, so they demand a reduction in the amount they have to pay. Some parents don’t want their children to have the free cow’s milk, and insist on having free oat milk instead. The supermarkets tell the parents the oat milk isn’t free. The parents report the supermarkets to the government for being non-inclusive.
· Some parents demand to see the full P&L accounts of supermarkets to check they are not making profits. When supermarkets increase their prices, some parents demand a breakdown of how the supermarkets have worked out their increases. Supermarket admin departments spend hours dealing with queries and complaints.
· Some parents band together to create nasty social media groups to lambast the supermarkets. One in particular, called ‘Pregnant Then Starved’, operates under the belief that they are entitled to have their kids fed for free by money-grabbing supermarkets.
· The Prime Minister himself publicly labels supermarkets as ‘rip-off merchants’, further exacerbating the government-induced rift between parents and stores.
· Government attempts to squeeze supermarkets out of business by dictating how they operate (eg they are not allowed to sell bread, fruit or milk for more than 10 hours per day), along with huge hikes in employment costs.
· Government ultimately wants all food to be provided by state-run institutions. Some of these are already busy undercutting the supermarkets with full backing of the government.
· Many small supermarkets and convenience stores go bust, unable to meet the costs imposed by this scheme. Some close out of sheer exhaustion and disillusionment.
.. after a while there were no large or small supermarkets left, meaning the parents had nowhere to get this 'free' food for their children. Then they realised they had nowhere to buy food for themselves either... other than the hastily set up government stores selling cheap imported food at highly inflated prices.
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Thanks to "Champagne Nurseries on Lemonade Funding" for the analogy.
