We met with Jade back in mid December as we were looking for childcare for our 4 year old daughter. During our first meeting, Jade told us that she would be applying for a number of different schemes, including the 15 and 30 hours free childcare schemes - which we were very keen to use now that our daughter had turned 4 and was now eligible to use the 30 hours free childcare. She had told us repeatedly that the free childcare would be in place in 'about a weeks time' and she would keep us updated. This was perfect as our daughters start date with Jade wouldn't be until beginning of January.

After endless excuses and delays, by mid January, we decided to call the local authority ourselves to enquire about the delays in getting the 30 hours scheme in place with Jade - as, in the meantime, it was costing us a lot of money!! Jade had told us that there was a backlog of applications and it was holding up the process. The Local authority told us that jade had not actually been registered or applied for the hours - there was no delay. Jade told us mid December that she was registered with Ofsted. She told us just today that she wasn't actually registered until January and that's why she didn't apply for the free hours scheme in time.

We were informed by the local authority that Jade had not even enquired about the scheme until the 25th of January despite her telling us from Mid December that it was in the process. As a result of this, we cannot use the free hours scheme with ANY provider, because Jade did not activate or validate our code before the deadline. We now have to pay out of our pockets until April. Last week, our daughter was offered a full time place at a brilliant nursery but, we were forced to decline the place as we don't have the 30 hours free funding. This is through no fault of
Our own; as we had our code for this since beginning of December.

We have repeatedly found her to be dishonest and misleading - we had to terminate our contract with her because of this. She has also refused to pay back our deposit - so we are a further £138 out of pocket. She even had the cheek to suggest we pay her ANOTHER weeks childcare fees because we didn't give two weeks termination notice... We actually gave 7 weeks notice. We always clearly stated that we would not require her services beyond the end of January if the free hours weren't in place by then.

This childcare provider is inexperienced and unreliable and we would not recommend. We were charged £4 each night for Jade to drop our daughter off at home (10 min journey) 90% of the time, Jade did not drop our daughter off... it was her partner - we had not met him previously and knew nothing about him. She still charged the £4 though. We had arranged for our daughter to be dropped at home each night between 5.30 and 6pm. Most nights it was after 6.30pm by the time she got home. With no explanation Why!

There is no flexibility with Jade - on one unfortunate occasion, due to a mix up of dates, Jade attended my daughter's nursery to collect her on the wrong date. It was our fault as we had accidently written the wrong date down for her. We expected some kind of charge for this mishap.. possibly an hours fee (£6.50) at most. Jade actually charged us £24 for this!

We feel there is a huge emphasis on fees and money rather than forming good relationships with parents, carers and children. This has caused endless stress to us and disruption to our daughters routine.

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