Friday, February 18, 2011

LÉON AND ANNA AND CHILDCARE COSTS


Today when I dropped Anna off for her 2 hours and 45 minutes of free state nursery care, I was handed a letter from the council. The director of education was offering me a holiday cover place for the ten days the nursery is closed at the beginning of April for 'just £32 a day'. It got me to thinking about childcare costs again. Calculating what it would cost me to have all my kids looked after for say the seven weeks of summer holiday alone is of course laughable (£4385.20 if we used the local private nursery for Amaia and the council summer clubs for the other four) but imagine I only had Léon and Anna which is a fairly normal family, right? They still expect me to pay £32 a day for Anna and £29.80 a day for Léon to use the council summer scheme, in other words £2348.40 for the seven weeks and three days they are off in summer.) How is this supposed to work in a city where the average salary is in the low £20k bracket?

1 comment:

Trine said...

That's just madness! I just calculated our expences on childcare for Karen and Ellen (when Karen is old enough to go to daycare): £4500 - for a year! And we've choosen the most expencive solution.

And when nursery and kindergarten is closed we're offered an alternative - that is three weeks during the summer and the days between Christmas and New Year.

Sometimes I'm really glad I live in Denmark. :)