Community Flexi-office with creche?

[Bebimama]

I'm a first time 'poster' so I hope this is ok. I've been meaning ask people ever since the budget came out and felt totally demoralised by the lack of assistance or anything for households where only one person earns an income. I'm setting up work from home but don't yet have an income to pay for childcare and my 2 year old is ...well...he doesn't let me do so much work as I would like to. You can imagine! I know other women who wouldn't mind volunteering to brush up skills etc but of course have a problem with childcare. Then I thought about some office space near me that is a flexible working office newly built for voluntary sector and small business use. It has a perfect 'meeting' room that would make a nice creche and facilities that could be used for mumpreneurs and perhaps mums wanting to some time to voluntary sector orgs. It sits there almost empty most of the time. Would love to get some funding to give mums low cost or even free flexi working depending on whether it was voluntary, early stage etc and then replicate it all over the country. Who helps with this kind of thing? Does anyone think it is a good idea?

[chaosisawayoflife]

No idea about funding, but I wonder if it could be done on a sort of reciprocal basis, so you have to help out in the creche in order to use the facilities. So you could get say 4 hours free childcare in return for working in the creche for 2 hours, for eg. No idea how it would work with insurance, crbs etc but its definitely something I would consider.

[MistyB]

Great idea. There are lots of working mums networks, is there one in your area? Maybe contact them and see if you can get something going. Working families may have some ideas.

[Bebimama]

Hello, thanks so much for replying and the encouragement. I clearly didn't put an exciting enough title though as I thought more people would respond. Sorry to take so long to respond, I thought it would 'alert' you when someone replies. Anyway, I've started harassing my local council and other organisations. Will give it another go by started another thread, but I really appreciate you taking the time to reply and you have some good ideas that I will keep in mind.