Childcare is not a dumping ground for the unemployable

People are so keen to get disabled people in to work. Workplaces are going to have to accommodate them. I'm sure people with ASD have plenty of strengths that can be utilised in childcare with the right support.

@UnsolvedMysteriesRobertStack
Ask your employer. Do they get some sort of government financial incentives to employ certain people? It's certainly unfair to make your job more difficult.

Absolutely the same in adult care. I have had staff who couldn’t speak English, which is the basic you need to communicate with the elderly. I had one carer who was older than 7 of my residents. One of my lovely residents stood up and offered my staff member a seat- and she took it! I hate the idea that social care is a crappy unskilled job which you can walk straight into. It is a skilled job whether you have children or vulnerable adults in your care. And all for minimum wage, even as a senior care member

Don't they have to have achieved qualifications for the job?

Yep No one gives a shit when its care homes.
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/in_the_news/5287824-woman-secretly-filming-her-mum-being-abused-in-a-care-home-distressing-content

To me the solution would not be to direct men into traditionally female roles but to direct women into engineering/ construction/ trades etc, so that women with poor academic attainment had equal earning potential. I see it a lot in my semi rural location. The boys who leave school with poor gcses generally end up apprenticing in scaffolding/ plumbing and so on , whereas the girls nearly always end up as carers, if they manage to escape the generational cycle of becoming pregnant before they step on a career ladder at all. In mainland Europe you see far more women working in traditionally male dominated industries, and despite the numerous initiatives to recruit women into construction/ stem/ tech, these still seem to be environments plagued by sexism and a preference for male workers.

I should add that it's perfectly legal (though not laudable) to have racist feelings, or misogynistic feelings, or feelings that disabled people are creepy, or whatever.

What's not legal is to expect the rest of the world to organise itself around your feelings, or to expect other people to cope with your feelings.

Someone might have a morbid terror of being driven – or OMG flown – by a woman, but that's their problem to solve. It's not for the airline to solve by refusing to employ female pilots.<shrug>

@PerkingFaintlyexactly, and those in health and social care know what sort of things are meant when people say ‘they can’t speak English’ which is never, funnily enough, an issue raised with Polish or Eastern European staff.

See also the Southern Cross scandal, when the strategy of sell and lease back the properties (after carpet-bagging the money released from the sales) unsurprisingly hit the skids.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2011/jun/01/rise-and-fall-of-southern-cross

https://www.theguardian.com/social-care-network/2011/dec/13/to-big-to-fail-southern-cross

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2011/jun/02/souther-cross-care-home-chain

Not only was it catastrophic for many residents of Southern Cross homes, but Southern Cross had such a large part of the market it impacted the whole industry.

God, racists cause so much damage – and this is just one example.

There's a genuine need for good communication between staff and clients, and it should be a neutral thing to require, like physical fitness for lifting jobs.

But racists – and let's not pretend they don't exist and haven't existed forever in every country – seize on anything going, as socially acceptable cover for their behaviour.

Racists and xenophobes, in between mocking accents and generally dissing brown people or foreigners or today’s target, claim not to understand their speech. While mysteriously having no difficulty at all with accents or language of the Right Sort of Person with a different accent or first language.

It completely poisons the well. Means every time a language issue is raised, the rest of us have to pause and spend time and energy figuring out if this is a good faith issue that needs to be solved as it stands... or a veiled attack on someone for their race or “otherness” where dealing with the language issue won’t solve the problem because it never was the problem.

And yes, I have indeed come across an elderly racist who, after repeatedly making excuses to snub a black British carer, disclosed to her family that she just didn’t want to deal with a black person.

If we didn’t have racists pulling this shit in the first place, there would be no more “side” to it than solving every other communication issue, like hearing loss or a poor phone connection.

Makes me rage.

Absolutely this, there is a reason that the likes of the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan are buying/building huge chains like Busy Bees in the UK and Giraffes in Ireland, they didnt spend €30 million euro without being convinced they'd make it back and then some!

Strong accents can be an issue for people who struggle to understand speech through learning disability for example, although this is often combined with the manner of speaking as well.

I think it's the same in lots of areas/industries, i.e. tradesmen, retail, hospitality, etc. The sad fact is that we have ever increasing numbers of people who are completely let down by our education system which is geared up mostly for the more academic kids pointed towards Uni. Very little is done early enough for the ones who aren't academic so left floundering who turn to disrupting the classes and truanting, etc., and leave school/college completely unprepared for adult life, let alone work. When these are second and third generation of the same, they've not a hope really.

It’s not racism but accents are accents, people can’t help having an accent. Most of the care staff I work with speak English well, in fact many come from places where English is a dual language such as India, Zimbabwe, Ghana, and so there is no issues with fluency, comprehension. But they have accents. You can tune into accents, it’s a skill but most of us can, old people included. What’s next no Scottish or Welsh healthcare workers either?

It's not discriminatory to want care staff to be easily understandable to the people they're caring for. It may not always be realistic, given what we pay, the fact that our primarily English as first language society has had a TFR below replacement for half a century and the new reality that the workforce increasingly value flexibility in jobs.

Oh c'mon. It's not discrimination when you ask for people to be able to communicate with the petson you're supposed to care for. My GDs favourite caretaker was black so def not a racist. He was hard of hearing even with hearing aid and needed people to articulate. It worked fine with everyone except two people who didn't understand him and whom he couldn't understand due to their lack of language skills. It's just common sense that it's important for an elderly person to be able to communicate with care staff.

This is a huge problem in a care home near me. The latest staff intake don't have the same commitment. They are sneaking off home and signing the time out book the next day with incorrect times so they don't lose money. English isn't their first language so there is a problem with communication. How can this be sorted out?

We need to encourage childminding more. Childminding from own homes tends to deliver better wages to the staff and cost less to parents.

A nursery is a terrifically expensive way to care for children due to the cost of buildings, and in many towns nurseries occupy buildings that used to be family homes.

Also the nursery sector attracts investors who are seeking profit. Lots will pretend they aren't but like care homes, its an area where private equity has taken root. An individual nursery may not look "profitable" on a standalone basis but the private equity investor will be scraping out profits via rents, service fees, interest costs, franchise or brand royalty fees etc. this means they make choices around staffing etc which are around reducing cost, not providing the best care to the DC. They pay as little as possible, so better quality workers are driven out of the sector.

@arcticpandasit could be appropriate though in some areas to have much more diverse staffing. In my area, something like 45% of children are bilingual. How fucking terrifying to be a baby brought up in a Bangladeshi household to be passed to white people who don’t speak your language? There’s something very calming about being spoken to in your mother tongue even if you can speak English fluently. There’s also communication with the parents and cultural understanding.
I disagree with you about care work too. Old people don’t not get a free pass to discriminate any more than you or I do.

Also could you just cease doing your job. ? Make it clear to management due to the staffing issues you need to take a step back & focus purely on mental stuff/dealing with parents & reports with occasional reading ect. While the new staff deal with tidying & day to day socialising with the kids

If the standard drops they'll know they need you & you'll have far more leverage then if you just report your co-workers a few times

Unfortunately this ^ childcare has typically been seen as the easy option for people who can't work/no training/minimal skills.

It's more so that there was a brief period where qualifications & standards rose due to costs/family seeking better options/publicity around things like Montessori's/Kindergarten (get the theme of European style childcare with development)

I'm young enough to have attended full time childcare in the 90's/2000's & the standard was lowwwwww compared to my niece's & nephews

So if there's a shortage of staff or excess pressure on getting more kids in at lower prices I can see how they'd revert to the old set up

However if it's effecting your job you need to speak up. Request better support or a higher salary more akin to management

I work in a secondary school in Scotland. I can confirm that absolutely nothing has changed with regard to girls’ low achievement/attendance ➡️ childcare path.
They are still being encouraged into it. And often they are the most behaviourally complex (and I’m sorry, not in a good way) girls in our school.
Do I think they’d be kind to the little ones? In fairness, absolutely. But dealing with parents, writing reports, building relationships with staff, punctuality and attendance … hmm, I’d have my doubts.

Sadly most people aren't willing enough to pay the tax that would be required to make the care sector a desirable place to work.

Who would want to work on minimum wage and all the unsociable hours that come with the care sector for any longer than they have to.

In my Local Authority area carers don't even get an enhanced rate for working weekends and vacancies do seem to be getting filled by people who want a stop gap job rather than a career.

Sorry to hear about your very tough experience, you were definitely up against it and you couldn't have tried any harder than you did 😔 Although it ruined your potential career in childcare, I hope what you do now is satisfying and well-paid 🙏

I had this issue when i was in my 20s i was looking for work but i was reluctant i was going through a bad time. My only place to live was my dads drug den it was horrible on my mental health living with a paranoid loony. I wanted a simple part time supermarket job to slowly ease me into work. So i could try and get on my feet.

I applied locally but nothing and the job centre kept applying the pressure .They arranged job interviews for me for places that were a hour long train ride away. I had childcare qualifications and hoped to go back one day but was not mentally ready. I was forced to go to a interview for a full time childcare job a hour train ride away and it took me a hour to cycle to a local train station from were i was living at the time. Then a 30min cycle from that train station ,so i was exhausted by the time i got there. I tried but couldn't cope ,subsequently i didn't go back to work for years after that experience .I have never worked in childcare again ,i used to love working with kids but the experience ruined it for me

I heard that nower days you dont need qualifications to work in childcare no wonder its gotten so much worst