Tag: childcare

New Year Resolutions for Parents and Childcare Professionals

How many New Year’s resolutions have you seen or heard from your family, friends and co-workers so far? How many of those were about weight, smoking, drinking, or travel? How many of those were about parenting or childcare? I’m guessing the latter was a significantly smaller number than the former.

This New Year, wouldn’t it be nice for us to make a New Year’s resolution that will not only benefit ourselves but our children and the rest of our family? That’s why we’ve put together a list of areas that we can all try to improve upon in the New Year when it comes to caring for our children.

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Fun Elf on the Shelf Ideas!

How are you getting on with that mischievous little man (or woman) known as Elf on the Shelf. It can be difficult to think of new mischief for your elf to get up to, especially if this isn’t the first year he’s come to stay.

That’s why we’ve put together plenty of new Elf on the Shelf ideas to help delight children of all ages this Christmas!

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Helping Children Deal with Bereavement and Loss

Bereavement can occur without warning at any time of our lives and it’s important to understand how as a nanny, you can help the children in your care deal with the losses that they may face.

Loss can be exceptionally difficult for children to understand as they are not always able to process the emotions and thoughts that follow, which is why it’s important that children have a strong support network at times of great upset.

Bereavement can be the death of a loved one, a friend or a pet, it could also be the loss of someone close to them, which can often be a result of divorce or separation of a child’s parents.

To help you further help the children in your care deal with the losses they face, we’ve put together the following advice:

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How to Keep Kids Active in Winter

As temperatures plummet it understandable to want to retreat to the house where it’s warmer, but the bad weather shouldn’t be an excuse for children to swap playing outside for lounging in front of the TV.

That’s why we’ve put together some simple ideas to help keep your children active this winter:

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Small Employer Relief

Our partners at www.PayrollForNannies.co.uk  provide payroll advice for parents and nannies and have provided this content. For more advice and support please get in touch with them.

In order to qualify for small employer relief, your liability for national insurance for the last complete tax year needs to be £45,000 or less.

An employer hiring a nanny will often meet the criteria of small employer relief.

This means that for statutory payments such as maternity pay, paternity pay, shared parental pay and adoption pay, you can reclaim 100% of these payments plus an additional 3% to help towards the cost of your employers NI.

It is important that this is noted in the payroll software, so if you ever have statutory payments, they will get deducted off your tax and national insurance liability each quarter.

Employers with a liability of more than £45,000.00 in last complete tax year can only claim back 92% of the above statutory payments.

Benefits in Kind

Our partners at www.PayrollForNannies.co.uk  provide payroll advice for parents and nannies and have provided this content. For more advice and support please get in touch with them.

Benefits in kind are benefits which both Employers and Employees can receive from their employment, which are not included in their salary.

As an employee, you pay tax on company benefits.  The amount of tax you pay, depends on what kind of benefits you get and their value and it is the employer who deducts the amounts from the employee’s gross earnings. However, some company benefits, are tax free.

 Most common benefits in Kind for nannies are listed below:

Private Car Mileage / Fuel Allowance

– Is not a taxable benefit if the employee is using the car during working hours. If they are using the car to get to and from work and outside their normal working hours, then this would be classed as a benefit in kind.  If nanny is using their own car whilst they are at work, up to 0.45p per mile is tax free.  Anything above this amount would be classed as a benefit and kind and will need to be reported to HMRC.

Private Medical Insurance

Subscriptions and Professional Fees

  • Such as paying for nanny’s Ofsted registration, DBS check, Nanny’s Public Liability Insurance

Living Accommodation

If you are providing living accommodation where the nanny has separate living quarters to the employer, this is classed as a benefit in kind, along with any bills and furniture you provide

Beneficial loans – Interest free or low interest

  • Any low –interest or interest free loans above the value of £10,000 are a Benefit in Kind.

Flights – which do not include family holidays if you are taking the nanny with you

Any declarations for Benefits in Kind need to be submitted to HMRC via for P11(D) by 6th July each year.  As an employer, there will be Class 1A National Insurance of 13.8% on the taxable benefit.

For more help and advice on this or any other payroll related matter please contact our recommended partners Payroll for Nannies https://www.payrollfornannies.co.uk/

Holiday Allowance

A full time nanny is entitled to 28 days holiday (5.6 weeks) which includes bank holidays. Employers are entitled to choose all the dates of holiday nanny should take, but in practice nanny normally chooses 2 weeks while the employer chooses the other 2 weeks.

In your contract with nanny, make sure you ask for notice for nanny’s proposed holiday this will allow you to find alternative childcare. Some employers ask for at least 4 weeks notice.

We would recommend you keep note of holiday taken paid or unpaid, just in case nanny leaves part way through the year and has over taken on holiday. This way any unpaid or over paid holiday can be paid/deducted in her final payslip.

If nanny works more than 5 days a week, their holiday entitlement is capped at 28 days. It is not a problem if you agree more day’s holiday with nanny – this could be a condition of her working for over a stated amount of time.

If nanny is part time, she is entitled to annual leave (28 days including bank holidays), but pro-rated. So if nanny works 2 days a week, her holiday allowance is calculated:

2 days a week x 5.6 annual holiday allowance = 11.20 days holiday.

You must not round the holiday allowance down to 11, but can round it up to 11.5 days.

If nanny works different hours each week, you calculate her holiday pay by averaging her last 12 weeks worked hours then multiply it by 5.6, this then gives you her holiday entitlement in hours for the year and when she has a day’s holiday or was due to work on a public holiday, whatever hours she was scheduled to work that day are then deducted from her overall annual entitlement.

For more advice and support on this or any other payroll related matter please contact our recommended partners Payroll for Nannies https://www.payrollfornannies.co.uk/

COVID-19 PLANNING – THE SECOND WAVE

Many medical experts are predicting a second wave of the COVID-19 Pandemic, which may arrive in the autumn as temperatures fall.

Although we do not want to try to predict the future, we examine a few possibilities and suggest some planning ideas.

Government Support resumes

Since the software and legislation is in place for both CJRS and SEISS, it would be relatively straightforward for the government to reactivate the schemes, perhaps with a smaller percentage of state support or in the case of CJRS, with an enhanced contribution from employers.

It may be argued that this would prove ruinously expensive for the country, but government borrowing can be scheduled over decades, as were war debts from WW1 and WW2. Of course, the government may raise National Insurance (NI) and tax rates to recoup some of this expenditure. There have even been rumours of a Net Wealth Tax being introduced.

The continuation of bank loans guaranteed by the government such as Business Bounce Back Loans and Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme could be another tool in the hands of the Treasury.

 

Government Support is not resumed

In this case there will be considerable issues for those businesses which are dependent on government support which may need to carefully consider their future.

Parental Bereavement Leave

As of 6th of April 2020, the government have introduced a new entitlement called Parental Bereavement Leave and Pay.

Under this leave/pay, parents who lose a child with a day-one employment right can take 2 weeks off work. These 2 weeks are at a statutory rate of £151.20 from April 2020.

Parental Bereavement pay is for adoptive parents, parents of a child born to surrogate, parents who are fostering to adopt and individuals caring for a child in their home, continuously for a period of 4 weeks ending with the date of death.

Parents will be able to take the leave as either a single block of 2 weeks, or as 2 separate blocks of one week each taken at different times across the first year after their child’s death. This means they can match their leave to the times they need it most, which could be in the early days or over the first anniversary.

2019-2020 Statutory Payments

From 6th April 2020 the rates for statutory payments will increase to the following.

 

SMP Statutory Maternity pay and SAP Statutory Adoption Pay are both increasing to £151.20 per week and 1st 6 weeks are still paid at either 90% of average earnings or £151.20 whichever is lower.

 

SPP Statutory Paternity Pay and ShPP Statutory Shared Parental Pay are both increasing to £151.20 per week or 90% of average earnings whichever is lower.

 

SSP Statutory Sick pay will increase to £95.85 per week and this only payable from the 4th consecutive working day off.