Student nurses have been shut out of Jeremy Hunt's £4bn free childcare package because they can’t earn enough to be eligible while working unpaid placements, a trainee has told openDemocracy.
Isabelle Roters, a second-year nursing student at Salford University and a mother of three, was on the verge of quitting her degree last year due to the financial strain of losing her childcare support.
Parents of children aged three and four in England were already entitled to 30 hours of free childcare, provided they work at least 16 hours a week at the national living wage. Today, the chancellor extended this to cover children over the age of nine months.
