NCS National Childcare Scheme funded based on attendance

Gatica · 14-06-2022 11:17am #1

Just curious if anyone else has been told they've to pay for the hours their child is not in attendance for all the hours for which the claim is made. I mean, if you apply for the full 45 hours NCS at 50c per hour, but your child doesn't attend all of the 45 hours, then you've to pay those 50c back for the non-attendance hours.

I find this notion bizarre, as I thought the scheme was to help parents with costs of child-care. If you pay for full-time childcare fees, you don't get a discount if you pick them up early on a Friday, if you take a couple of days of annual holidays when you can afford them, or you take them out of creche because they're sick and have to take unpaid leave from work. This just imposes more costs on parents, or loss of the benefit if you will, especially at a time when you're already losing pay because they're sick. In our case, I think we realistically use 40 hours of their services, although the creche is open 8-5.30, simply because my husband drops him in just before 9 on the way to work, and I start work early, so I can pick up from 4.30/5pm. Needless to say, our creche fee doesn't go down based on that.

I was notified by our care-provider of the issue, and she seems to know the exact hours of under-attendance, and so the amount we owe to her, which admittedly isn't huge (under 20 quid). However, to find this info, I have to login to the https://www.ncs.gov.ie/ site, to to My Claims, View Claims, click on the claim for my son, then there I spotted the message "A Correction has been applied to this Claim by the NCS Scheme Administrator, click here for further details", click on "here" in the red message and then there, I have to go through all the dozen pages of weekly awards to find the ones with "Claim Correction Hours" and tot them up manually. (I can't be bothered, and I trust my creche manager). Actually, I just realised the NCS Notification emails went to my spam, but you still have to go through all that navigation on their site to get the amount.

neris · 14-06-2022 11:23am

If you think youve a pain in the ass working out the under attendance for 1 child/family imagine how the creche manager feels. The whole things a pain for both sides. Its very confusing and poorly run by pobal who dont care about either the parents or providers and do all they can to try stop paying out anything where they can.

Deeec · 14-06-2022 11:36am

I havent experienced this myself so I cant help you. The only reason why this should arise is when someone applies for say fulltime hours but then reduces the hours with the creche ( say goes from a 5 day week to 3 day week). Holidays, sick days etc shouldnt affect the award at all. How would the scheme even know the exact hours your child attended every week? I would query this with the creche.

Also I just want to say how daft the National Childcare scheme is. It is of no help to working middle income parents whatsoever. The website is of no help either. It is not clear how the awards are calculated at all.

It seems even the providers are confused by it. I truly believe I am overpaying my creche as they seem to use different calculations to me. Its not transparent at all what the creche is actually receiving from the scheme - its dependent on the hours they are saying your child attends which could be filed wrong by the creche. Why cant they have a system where the subsidy is paid directly to the parents and the parents then pay the full amount of fees to the creche.

Gatica · 14-06-2022 2:01pm

I think the amount calculated by the creche sounds right, so I've no doubts there. I know also how our fees are calculated. The attendance is reported by the creche based on the time the child is checked-in and checked-out on their app. The 3-days vs 5-days makes sense, as you'd be paying for reduced hours, however, we're in full-time care, paying full-time fees. If he went in for 5 hours in the week, we'd still have to pay same fee as that's what's agreed with the creche.

I've no problem with them paying the carers directly, but yeah, it's hard to find the info on what is paid into them. Though it appears it's there in the ncs.gov.ie link if you try hard enough to find it.

Anyway, it seems like it's not thought out if they're trying to catch people out by a few quid if they're not in the creche for every minute they're open.

Deeec · 14-06-2022 3:06pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119201166#Comment_119201166

As your child is in full time care then the creche should be paid the 50c for every hour. As you rightly said you are paying for the service whether your child is there or not.

My son is only in the creche for 3 days per week and and he has ecce for 3 hours per day. The ECCE though is not paid during summer, easter or christmas. Its always a mess for these weeks to work out what I actually owe to them. The creche says they dont get paid the awarded rate (0.50 cent )for the 3 hours per day that would have been ECCE hours during summer, easter and christmas and I have to pay it for these weeks. Its only a small amount so I dont argue it but it still doesnt make sense to me. In the contract we also get 2 weeks holidays per year where we dont have to pay - again I never seem to get this. I have queried this with the creche owner and never get an answer. Other parents have also raised this 2 week holiday issue aswell. The creche doesnt have an app to confirm times etc so Im not sure if they have to log the times with the NCS or what happens. I guess this could be open to manipulation.

Thankfully Im done with creche this year as my youngest is starting school in September.

NCS National Childcare Scheme funded based on attendance

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