Unregistered Childcare

I was speaking to a pg friend the other day and she was saying that her mum is going to look after the baby when she returns to work. She went on to say that her mum is on benefits so she will be paying her cash to help her with her income.

Now I know that receiving additional income to benefits and not declaring it is wrong but when I pointed out that if she is being paid to care for a child for more than 2 hours at a time then she needed to get registered she told me that she had looked into it and that so long as it was no more than 2 children at a time then her mum could be paid for full time care (obviously not worried about the benefit fraud bit)

Does anyone know anything about this? I was sure I was right about the 2 hour thing but now don't know.

Thanks

[watgem]

I thought it was 2 hours too, regardless of how many children but I'm not sure if this includes relatives?

Grandparents looking after children is always a grey area and Ofsted might not do anything about it.

The parent could get Tax Credits if she used registered care and that would help to pay childcare fees. Her mum could register if she wanted but I suppose she would then lose some of her benefits.

Also, benefit fraud is theft so she ought to be careful as someone might report her!