Working mums - what do you do when childcare fails?

[Ozgirl75]

I’m writing from the perspective of the employer and I will say I’m not based in the U.K. but I have a business there and we’re having an issue that we’ve never come up against before.
I’ve always tried to hire mums for our office as I like to support working parents, I’ll say that first.
We have a woman working in our office who has been with us for about 10 months. She has a young child, about 18 months. Her mum is the childcare.
Her mum has let her down with childcare on a few occasions and we’ve dealt with this fine. However, her mum now has Covid and can’t look after her child for 10 days. Her dad caught it a week later and this adds on another 10 days.
She has basically said she can’t come into work for this whole period as she has no other childcare.
It isn’t a role that can be done from home. We’ve said she can take holiday but she won’t have enough to cover the whole period.
So my question is, can she do this? Just cite no childcare and not come to work? How do other people deal with this?

It is my understanding that emergency parental leave (unpaid) is something that employers can't say no too but that is 1 day or maybe 2 to allow for short term problems or arrange alternative care.
She could request parental leave which is booked in blocks of one week up to 4 weeks total. Also unpaid but this is at employers discretion.
So you could allow her the time off if you want too but you don't have to pay her

You should allow her the time off but it should be unpaid. Parents should share emergency childcare issues between the two parents rather than have it all fall on the mother and the mother’s employer.

Also, most families try and have a back up system in place for inevitable things like chicken pox or other contagious childhood illnesses. Technically the grandmother should be able to do childcare after her 10 day isolation, not in the home where the grandfather isolating but she could do it in the child’s home.

At my company I think I'd ask for parental leave in that situation to cover it. I'm sure my manager would be ok with that (he's reasonable and supportive).
...but, it seems unusual not to have any back ups. My husband and I usually muddle through and take it in turns to take days for when kids are sick. If a grandparent can't help out we rely on the childminder more and if the childminder is sick we rely on grandparents more or take time off ourselves.

Surely that's just unpaid leave not holiday?

Thank you - yes I was surprised that she couldn’t care for the child in her home instead but I’m wary of providing “solutions” for her that she then has to explain away. I don’t know anything about her home situation but she does have a partner.
It’s very hard as we are a small business, we only have three people in the office so to have someone take nearly three weeks off is so inconvenient. Especially just before Xmas as it prevents other staff taking time off.

She is trying to push the work from home angle but we’ve explained on a number of occasions that it isn’t a home based role. There are bits she can do at home but the job requires a presence in the office (for reception, deliveries etc)

We paid over the odds for a nanny, and had a 4-way reciprocal agreement with other families to be back up childcare for each other if one nanny was sick
And nannies still work when a child has the sort of illnesses that would stop them being allowed into nursery

It cost more than using a nursery but we had no local family, and worked in jobs with zero tolerance for things like childcare issues so we kept our careers on track

Also made sure we paid for chicken pox vaccines

My main surprise is that someone would just say “I have no childcare so deal with this for three weeks” - I’ve never come across this before.

My DC are looked after by nursery & grandma so if one fails I try the other. Failing that DH or I take time off.

I’ve no more annual leave left this year so if I need to take time off for childcare reasons I’ll have to ask for unpaid leave or just take the time off and make up the work in evenings or weekends, which is thankfully possible in my role within reason

There are two , maybe 3 issues here. One is COVID - my child might be sent home from childcare for a week fora cold these days and that’s life right now- one of us has to be home. I can wfh but it’s not the same with a 3yo so my dh will also do a day or so even though it’s less effective for him to wfh plus grandparents sometimes when they can. You don’t have to provide paid leave but you do have to accept unpaid leave.
The second point though is she has unstable childcare. Her mum doesn’t seem reliable, and I would chat to her about that and say understand the COVID isolations, but in general you don’t seem to have reliable childcare and that’s really something you need.

The 3rd point you can’t really make probably but if she has a partner they should be helping, dads not pulling their weight is a huge problem with women in the workforce. But nothing this woman can do anything about if her partner won’t.

@Ozgirl75

My main surprise is that someone would just say “I have no childcare so deal with this for three weeks” - I’ve never come across this before.

Well, you may not have seen it but it must have happened hundreds of thousands of times over the past two years, because dc have been sent home for a week or two, dc isolating similarly, childcares shut down for deep cleaning, nannies sick, dcs sick.

I just want to avoid doing or saying anything that is firstly against the law (I thought I couldn’t ask about childcare at all) and also I am genuinely supportive of working parents but in the past everyone else we have working for us with children has never just thrown their hands up and said they can’t come in, and I stupidly assumed that most families have a plan for these situations.
She has already had a number of unpaid days off when the child themselves were sick. In fact it’s an unusual month when she doesn’t have at least 2-3 days off with her, her child or her mum sick.

My husband and I share it and we take a mixture of dependents leave (we both get 10 days at full pay plus extra for Covid), annual leave or unpaid leave.
We don’t have any practical family support as they aren’t local (but I don’t like to say no support as they provide emotional and financial support in spades but can’t do the practical).

With us splitting it, it’s manageable, but only just. It would be very hard as single parents. It’s only because I’m relatively senior that I don’t worry about job being impacted by the horrendous absence we’ve had.

I have never heard of this and don't think it's acceptable - a day or two to sort it out yes, but not two weeks.

People have to have a back up solution. In this case, given she hasn't got it in place, could she and her partner at least split it, and she can take the rest unpaid.

Check it out legally and then HR need to talk through the need for a back up solution when she returns.

You can get emergency childcare through an agency, she just doesn’t want to pay for it.

I’d ring ACAS and ask advice about starting the disciplinary process.

Has she been there two years or more? I’d just get rid, she is taking the piss. Her childcare arrangements are not your problem.

As far as I know you can ask about childcare.. if employees work from home I think you can check there is care and they aren't trying to work and look after the baby..

Anyway get HR to check it out. But certainly this isn't normal, your employee needs to sort out a back up.

Thanks so much for all your input, it’s given me food for thought. I want to support her, but it does feel that she definitely puts work as a final priority and we just don’t have the slack in the system to absorb another person’s work in this way.

www.gov.uk/time-off-for-dependants

The above is the law on it. I would ask what arrangements she has tried to make. Off the top of my head I'd consider:

• partner/Childs dad
• other friends and family
• mum coming to her house once isolation period is over rather than having child at their house
• calling nurseries to see if they can do emergency childcare, some do.

We have both sets of grandparents and nursery so there is usually another available option, however recently DM had Covid, MIL broke her arm and nursery wouldn't allow extra different days due to bubbles. We had to mix between WFH, flexible working in the office and occasional bouts of things the tank engine if we both had urgent teams meetings, for example one would log on at seven am until one pm the other one pm until seven pm then both catch up for a couple of hours after DS was in bed, parts of our job can be done from home at a push though and we both work for the same public sector employer, we also both have exemplary attendance/sickness records and are known for being hard working/team players etc so when an emergency struck work were very willing to help. I've always thought what do single parents do when DC are too ill to go to school and they have no local family etc.

This is often a problem with using family childcare - people using paid childcare often have family as their back-up, paid childcare more often comes with built-in back-up (e.g. childminders who can cover for each other when ill) and if they don't have either of those they accept paying for emergency childcare because they're used to paying. People who have family childcare are often essentially using their back-up and also either cannot or will not contemplate paying for emergency childcare.

I think you need to make it clear that this isn't all fine and dandy, because if her employer is endlessly understanding that's probably at least part of the reason why she always takes the time off, not her partner.

It seems like the main problem is that she uses her mum for childcare. For example my child goes to nursery, if his sick I can ask grand parents to look after him (if they are not working) and then the next option is me and my husband taking days off work.

In her situation she doesn't have paid childcare so once her family childcare is not available her only option is to do the childcare her self. Yes parents should split the leave, but if it's going to be unpaid and her husband is the higher earner they may not be able to afford to loose his wages. Also if she is part time and he is full time again higher earner then whose job are they going to pick to potentially muck around with in these circumstances, hers. She may not tell you these variables but that might be what choices she has in her household.

If her child hasn't been to a childcare setting before she would find it very difficult to find alternative care for him to settle at and also places are difficult to find. Emergency child care options are available within two hours notice but the cost is high and also her child may not settle. Most households have two working parents now so asking a friend to help out isn't normally possible. So most parents are left with their only options of taking annual leave or unpaid leave.

I would suggest to her that she should try and find a local childminder who may do emergency childcare and get her child used to them if possible for situations that arise like this otherwise she needs to get used to unpaid leave if she can't work at home or work alternative hours to her husband to ensure she can work. Sounds like her family childcare isn't reliable either if her mum has let her down quite a few times as well.

@Ozgirl75

Thanks so much for all your input, it’s given me food for thought. I want to support her, but it does feel that she definitely puts work as a final priority and we just don’t have the slack in the system to absorb another person’s work in this way.

Of course work is her final priority. Do you expect her to leave her kids at home alone just to come to work? Some people don't have any friends or families that can help, her mum helps which is great but they've had covid for heavens sakes. I'm not sure what you expect her to do?

Of course she can do it. She is a parent, she can’t just leave her child at home alone if you are not willing to amend her duties so she can WFH (even on reduced hours?) then it would typically be unpaid leave otherwise I am assuming it will wipe out the majority of her AL. It happens. Don’t say you want to support working parents and then lack understanding when a working parent has a childcare issues. Not ideal for an employer but her life isn’t just ‘employee’.

1. see if husband can help 2) see if mum can help 3) WFH 4) when it was a job I couldn't work from home I guess I'd expect to have to take the day unpaid (or annual leave) the child needs looking after, but I wouldn't expect to be paid for that length of time.

Lol my boss asked me to look into emergency childcare once (no family nearby) its £200 a day, more than I earn?
All my Friends work full time, and I do too so can't reciprocate for others.
My kids have had 24 days off school/nursery since September- it's completely unprecedented times. Illness is rampant, luckily I can work from home, I've no idea how others manage.
Childcare is insanely expensive and inaccessible to people earning under a certain salary - that's why so many are dependent on family till the kids are 3.