Another childcare rant - how do people do it?!

Why on earth shouldn’t it be down to parents to sort? Who else?

I’ve never understood people who don’t contemplate this and formulate a plan before TTC.

Live on one income, work opposite shifts, save in advance to pay for childminders, hire an au pair, etc etc.

Complaining that fellow citizens don’t pay even more of their hard earned wages in taxes to provide even more services to a select cohort is not very admirable. Parenthood is voluntary, not mandatory.

If there are enough parents needing wrap around care, perhaps the parents and school can work together to identify a business that can run on-site after school care. Where I am the wrap around care is all provided at the school by businesses that are separate from the school but have a contract to use the school hall and the playground to run things out of. Mostly it’s one adult and some older teenagers that provide the care. The same place also provides holiday programmes. I’m just wondering if there would be someone looking for an opportunity to start their own business. There’s no way that the parents that use the service here would have the time for multiple meetings to organise things!

Honestly, dad works days and I work evenings so we don’t use childcare at all, although school has a breakfast and tea club that seem fairly popular. There are also a couple of childminders that drop off and pick up at the school too.

i would say is it worth sucking up the inconvenience of a few hours meeting for the committee to get the onsite wrap around care for your daughter ? Might be the lesser of any other evils in terms of stress of finding a new school you are happy with or alternative childcare. That may take as much time as you would be sat in meetings for the childcare especially if travel time to a new school was factored in.

We are living preciously as well as my eldest is at a school with no wrap around care, dh works shifts and currently my parents pick up the slack when dh is on shift but they are getting on years so not sure if this can be a long term arrangement. I am thinking when my youngest starts school I become self employment, my pension might take a dive but I don't feel I will have much choice if there is no change to the status quo.

@SMLSML you asked about pre-Covid – my DC were in primary a long tiem pre-Covid, and neither of us wfh at the time tho I guess that would be arguable now with the jobs we did.

We planned ahead to make sure our employer (it was the same employer) was happy for us to flex our hours – they wanted to keep us both and it was more than reasonable anyway.

It sounds difficult for you – do you have only one DC? If so, bear in mind that it is only for a few years. What do other parents do? Is there any capacity for you or DH to go part-time working schoolish hours – 9-3 with no lunch break five days a week is 30 hours a week?

By not using school as childcare? It's for education, not babysitting.

We had a live in au pair and then after school club. DH was supposed to meet them from the school bus and take them home, but he kept forgetting. After school club was more reliable.

If you don't want to join a committee, and don't want to look for a childminder, I'd suggest employing an after school nanny.
Organising childcare does tend to be down to parents!

This is the case with committee run childcare.

My children went to a committee run preschool, we paid professional staff but the committee was parent volunteers. If we didn't get enough parents bothering to join the committee (1 meeting per term) and go to the AGM (once a year) we couldn't run.

Why not join the committee?

We both went part time when we had our kids and did 30 hours a week - three long days and two short days each. The person doing the long day dropped off, the one doing the short day picked up, grandparents picked up on the 5th day, but we did change this to after school club.

. It's an official after school club but they're now saying due to legal reasons they need volunteers otherwise they'll have to close

This will be a not for profit. They are always run on a shoestring and at risk of closing. They rely on volunteer trustees as a management committee.

Suggest to school that they invite private providers to take over. Local nursery chains will often do this. They will be more expensive but much more reliable and financially viable.

It running from 8.45-3.15 when most people are required to work from 9-5.30 (plus commute) is a model based on an era where you didn’t have dual income households in the way you do today.

Trying to organise around that for people who need to work full time (which is most parents nowadays) is a nightmare and if we were inventing schools today, they definitely wouldn’t be operating on that time schedule.

Most schools have a professionally operated after school club run by a private provider.

Its got paid staff and there's no question of getting volunteers to run it. Its just a case of putting your child's name down. Round our way one school has a poor ASC offering and it simply means no working parents choose that school.

Childminder is your best bet. Didnt you consider it earlier? I knew we'd need one so chose that over a nursery as most give their after school places to the children with them as toddlers.

Hire a nanny. Admittedly they won’t be doing that much in the term time other than drop offs, pick ups and after school but you’ll also have them for the entire day in the holidays.

Paid childcare

The school have a statutory duty to consider wraparound - push the head

Don’t forget, school’s not there for childcare.

I pick up my GC twice a week….my DP takes them once a week ….other GP pick up twice a week and their aunty picks them up 1 day a week….don’t know how people without family manage …..can’t beleive the cost of after school clubs these days

If there are other parents in your situation and you can't reduce your hours and neither can they, can you employ a nanny, or a nanny share?

@SMLSML

I worked part time, most families had one part time worker unless they had family help. Others split the day with one parent starting early so they could finish by 3, the other starting after school starts.

DP and I had to work alternating shifts and reduced hours.

He worked Mon-Wed alternating Mon-Thur and I worked the opposite, Thur-Sun and Fri-Sun.

We both had arduous battles with flexible working requests with our employers, and we hardly had any time for eachother, our house was a mess, we rarely ate home cooked meals, we were shattered at the end of the day and could barely look at one another, but we understood that it was necessary until either one or both of our earning potentials increased.

It's one of the sacrifices you have to make when you have kids if you don't have a reliable villiage or the funds for additional childcare.

We have an afterschool nanny three days a week. On the other two days me/DH are WFH, so we pick them up.

Childminder (dc started before school age) plus work term time only. We also moved closer to family before having kids so they could be more involved.

Lots of families have either a stay at home parent, a part time parent, flexible work or family support.