How are other people dealing with work out of home and kids?

[Ozgirl75]

I’m looking for some solutions for one of my employees. She has a 10 year old and we can let her work from home about 80% of the time but sometimes she does need to be in the office.

What do you do if you have work obligations but also children? I’m not being goody, I’m not in the U.K. and don’t know what’s available. I think in the holidays she normally has a mix of vacation care and she takes holidays but we’re staring down the barrel of another 3 months off and I just don’t know how she can carry on as she is.

For the last two months she has been barely coping, bringing her daughter in with her sometimes, sneaking her to grandparents etc. We have been so so flexible but we have other staff and if she doesn’t work then we (The business) are in trouble.

What are other people doing?

Mine are older so I can leave them at home, but in her position I would contact the school and explain she needs to work and see if they have a place for her child. However they may already have their maximum numbers. If she is 10 she is likely to be year 5 and that isn't one of the years currently going into school unless they are keyworkers children. If she is in year 6, then this is one of the years that schools are able to open again for, however not all schools are taking the same years back in.

Summer holidays are going to be very difficult if people can't use grandparents and potentially I guess there may be no holiday clubs this year.

It is genuinely very difficult. Lots of my friends are juggling childcare and work. It's not easy.

Sadly the dad isn’t around and I think she feels very guilty asking her parents. This is so hard and I have so much sympathy for her and the situation and I just don’t see how people are doing this! I mean, it’s not in any way a frontline job but it’s still a business employing a number of people that needs its staff in order to survive.

My employer has given us a time code whereby we are essentially on paid special leave for the hours we struggle to work, we are all working from home. We will have access to this code until schools fully open, if we decide not to send a child in for personal reasons (not including genuine shielding) then it is expected to come out of our own time; annual leave etc. This is public sector though, I appreciate this must be harder to achieve in the private sector.

Well after a long discussion where it’s clear that she’s basically on the verge of a breakdown we have put her on furlough for three weeks. We will have to muddle through but she’s clearly hugely struggling.