Our childminder has worked for us for 6 years, 3 days per week. Great with the kids (9, 6, 3) and when they are with her I never worry.
She is not the easiest with communications with parents however. She has been on sick leave for three weeks now and it’s at the stage where she is day-to-day texting whether she will return or not. 1st week she had a cold, took full week off. 2nd week covid, full week off. 3rd week, feels absolutely fine (her words) but has today told us she doesn’t want to work until her antigen test is negative (yesterday she said she would “definitely be back by end of week”).
She has form for making up her own rules on illness and days off, she is ill regularly enough (3-4 times per year, normally 1 week off per illness) and will also take time off ad-hoc and last min to mind her son if he is unwell. Her son is 22, no additional needs, generally he is quite coddled by her. When covid hit in March 2020, she - for obvious reasons - didn’t work, but extended it by months of leave (6 months in total) and her reasoning was that our children were vectors and she couldn’t risk her son becoming unwell (20 yrs old at time). That was hard.
I need a subjective view on her from you all. I’m at the stage where my husband and I have run down our annual leave to zero balance (but still have summer holidays ringfenced), we’re utilising local babysitters for chunks of time in the day when we can. Our 3 yr old goes to pre-school in September. Afterschool is covered here as standard so we could manage without her from Sept although that wasn't what we were considering. We could get someone who will cover the remainder of the summer minding for us to allow our CM to recuperate. Is it time to say goodbye to our CM? The day to day “I can work, I can’t work” is so unbelievably stressful to manage. Other factors at play. I’m only 3 months in new job and don’t have a bank of holidays I can call on. My mum is going through chemo so I need to be available to help her when possible – it’s a big drive too to her as she lives across the country. It’s not the easiest phase at the moment.
Any thoughts? Woudl appreciate some input from those not in the weeds with this situ. Thanks.