Parents who are in full-time higher education may be eligible for a Childcare Grant that can be used to partially pay for their childcare. This will cover 85% of the weekly costs, up to a cap, and the parents must pay the remainder themselves by card or bank transfer. You do not need to sign up for an account to receive these payments - tiney will handle that on your behalf. Student Finance payments are made weekly in arrears.

For the 2026 to 2027 academic year, the grant covers

tiney will create an account for each provider who has a family using the Childcare Grant with them - childminders do not need to make this themselves.

The account will have a CCG Reference number which is unique to each childminder. This number will be included in all contracts you create using Student Finance as the payment method, and guardians will use this number to link each of their children to your setting in their CCG portal.

Guardians may need to relink their child at the start of a new academic year or term. tiney will contact the guardian or provider if we see that a child is not linked, as we will be unable to process requests for payments if this is the case.

The Student Finance Childcare Grant works in arrears on a weekly basis, meaning that each week (usually on a Monday), tiney will send a request to each guardian's CCG portal for the care costs from the previous week. The request is based on the care schedule and rates information we have for each child, so please let us know ASAP if anything changes.

The guardian is alerted to the request, and can approve it from their portal. Student Finance will then release their part of the payment to us, and the guardian will see the breakdown of the amount paid by Student Finance and the remainder to be paid by them.

The payment from Student Finance usually reaches tiney on the Thursday after the request has been approved by the guardian, and we'll add it to your wallet the same day. We will invoice the guardian for their part of the childcare costs separately.

Invoices will be created for the total weekly cost of care, from Monday to Sunday. The due date will be set to the Monday of that week. This will be displayed on the invoice:

The invoice will show in draft status in your wallet - this is viewable only to you, and cannot be sent to the parents at this point.

Once the payment is received from Student Finance, the invoice will be amended to show the remaining cost to be paid, which will be invoiced to the parent.

This will show as two invoices that make up the total weekly cost of care at £100:

Yes: it's a condition of the grant that parents must pay the costs not covered by Student Finance.

Payments from Student Finance will always be weekly in arrears, as that is the process set by the grant.

We will issue invoices to parents using Student Finance weekly by default, but if they'd prefer to pay their part of the costs monthly, please get in touch with us to discuss.