Here in France we have a system where the payments for child care is graded so those with low income pay zero (actually get billed a low hourly price plus receive an immediate help from the state so the net to pay is zero) and those with highish (> €40000/year) pay a high per hour rate and get the help capped to 600€, and that help drops to zero if the hourly rate goes above 10€/h (which can quickly happen if you have a flat daily rate but fail to present the child on time, like nobody with children has never been late, ever) or for days the child is not presented to childcare at all, but you still get billed for those, including if the child is ill up to 5 days (after that healthcare takes over, but in between, which is pretty much most of the time, you foot the bill)
I’ve been a father for three weeks, we ran the numbers with my wife for this kafkaesque system with crazy conditions at every corner that seem specifically designed to make us bleed inane amounts of money, and for our current situation this means for five days a week of presence the bill totals north of 2k€/mo, minus the capped 600 on the happy path, and if everything goes well... <deity> forbid anything goes wrong., we’d have to foot the whole bill plus possible penalties.
YMMV and there are “somewhat cheaper” solutions, but there’s 1-2+ year (years!) wait queues, and they’re not FIFO but priority ordered by... revenue, which makes the queue virtually infinite for us. So my wife which had an entrepreneur project on the table is contemplating dropping that on the floor and staying at home, which would be a terrible move in so many ways.
I’m all for social help and levelling the playing field, but this is downright batshit insane.
I’ve been a father for three weeks, we ran the numbers with my wife for this kafkaesque system with crazy conditions at every corner that seem specifically designed to make us bleed inane amounts of money, and for our current situation this means for five days a week of presence the bill totals north of 2k€/mo, minus the capped 600 on the happy path, and if everything goes well... <deity> forbid anything goes wrong., we’d have to foot the whole bill plus possible penalties.
YMMV and there are “somewhat cheaper” solutions, but there’s 1-2+ year (years!) wait queues, and they’re not FIFO but priority ordered by... revenue, which makes the queue virtually infinite for us. So my wife which had an entrepreneur project on the table is contemplating dropping that on the floor and staying at home, which would be a terrible move in so many ways.
I’m all for social help and levelling the playing field, but this is downright batshit insane.