Childcare costs- someone talk me through the outrage

[Suzietwo]

Is it just me or does it seem a bit grabby of mothers to be getting cross about the change to child care rules?

I thought the rules were being changed to try and encourage people to work. Ie to give them more choice and be option generating aka A. Good. Thing.

But the stay at home mums voice in the media just sounds a bit self important.

Don't misunderstand me, I am entirely on favour of people and families making decisions which suit them. This isn't about that. It's about people being a bit....indulged? Make a choice, stick with it. The more choices which are available the better so if the gvnt can help (a different argument about whether they should) by offering money to assist people go to work, then fab. But don't demand it for making the choice to stay at home.

But this scheme is replacing existing childcare subsidies with a less generous provision and applying it to people who really don't need the money. Tax credits subsidised childcare. They've now been cut, and the replacement (universal credit) will cut that element still more. Childcare vouchers subsidised childcare. They have now been replaced with this tax break, which will leave middle earners worse off and top earners better off. Low earners will not benefit at all. So it isn't about subsidising childcare and helping the economy; rather it's about making sure the rich tory voters are kept sweet.

It is slightly simple maths sometimes though. What is the point of giving someone £500 to pay for their childs care when they could simply give it direct to the mother so she could do it herself?

The choice just isn't there, it doesn't make sense.

I am given that £500 for childcare, I would prefer to have it to stay home. At the moment I pay no tax with childcare vouchers (similar to this scheme) and my job could be freed up for someone who WOULD pay tax.

I don't understand what the point is of creating a situation where loads of people are working and paying no tax when you could pay them less money to stay home and tax the person doing the job in their place.

It doesn't make financial sense to force people back to work when they won't be contributing. Just give them the money to stay home if that's what they want.

Bridget, do you not see a long term value of that parent remaining in work, even if it costs the country something during the pre-school years? Because I'm pretty sure that's part of the government's calculations.

Why? Those skills would not be lost, other people would be doing the job. And otherwise the other person who was doing that job would not be in work so it's an exchange rather than a loss of a person in the workforce.

And the majority of these people would be people who had already been in the workforce for some years so would still have skills to return with.

And if the financial incentives are only there during pre-school years the majority would probably return when school started, as they do with mat leave currently.

If there is a cost to state for private childcare I don't see why that cost can't be used to support the parent at home as well.

It seems to me that the majority of people just lump SAHM in with lazy benefit claimants. For what it's worth I work part time and would love to stay home, it makes me very sad that my payments can only be used to pay for someone else to look after my child when it could be used for me to do it myself.

Doctrine

It doesn't matter what anybody thinks about a long term value of both parents remaining in work.
There just aren't the jobs nor the hours to sustain this. That is why there are low income families with both parents working not paying tax and now losing their childcare subsidy. All this while the rich get richer.
Also it is a personal opinion if both parents remain working and in imo it isn't valuable to me.

'It is slightly simple maths sometimes though. What is the point of giving someone £500 to pay for their childs care when they could simply give it direct to the mother so she could do it herself?'

I agree Bridget.

I also don't think Sweden is the utopia it is made out to be. Yes most women work (although often get more generous maternity leave) but often they are in lower paid jobs and have very high sick rates. Their attitude was to pull men back into the home and push women out to work. To me that is dictatorial. Forcing/pushing mothers into work is no better than pushing them into the home. It should be about choice. Each family to decide and enabled to choose.

Both parents working full time is not the best for all families. There are many combinations. So why does the government push for only that model? It automatically discriminates against lone parents for a start. Furthermore if the aim is to have both parents sharing the work/care then why not both work part time? That would be more progressive surely? So then it is obviously all about the money and childcare business and not about what is best for each family..

DH and I were both full time with DD1 and she was in full-time childcare. However DH has a much better paying job now but it involves extreme shift work and working away ( Whoever keeps bleating about that being no excuse not to work has no clue!). So for us it works out much better me being home especially as we now have 5DC. That example shows that dual income is not the best for everyone and doesn't always involve more taxes to the government either. Families also are not static, many WOHM/SAHM end up doing the opposite.

I don't think anyone is lumping SAHM in with lazy benefit claimants at all!

Like I said earlier, the aim of the government is to improve the economy. If it were more cost effective to pay parents to stay at home, then they'd do it - they'd be actively chasing parents - no, mums probably! - out of the workplace. The fact that they don't is that overall the sums add up that keeping people in work is more cost effective.

You make it sound very simplistic Bridget - one woman stepping out of the workplace to become a SAHM and another person gratefully stepping in. What if the first woman likes being paid to be at home so much that when little Johnny starts school, she pops out another baby for another 5 years being paid a wage to be at home? What if when little Jenny starts school she pops out another? What if she doesn't really feel like starting work again even when they're all at school? What if we all decided it might be rather nice to receive a wage to stay at home? Who would pay for it?

These are genuine questions which I think if anyone who advocates 'wages for staying at home' has a responsibility to address.

I don't see why mums who stay at home should be given more money towards childcare costs... They don't need to pay for childcare? (I 'm a SAHM) i just wish the UK was more like parts of Scandinavia with their ideas on childcare....

wish

replying to your post.

Ok, some peoples partners work away, some peoples partners can't just take half a day off when it suits, some people don't have a partner, some people have no close or no extented family at all. Some people are completely on their own with their dc.
So I guess they are going to be allowed to attend interviews now, unless companies provide childcare.

Janey

You might not like it but your scenario above is true for many a sahp.
I have made a career out of being paid to be a sahp and nothing is due to change for me with UC except I may have to look for work, which doesn't exist
The gov know there isn't the work but by their spin of it "paying to keep people in work" they are buttering up their voters. I am still going to receive the same amount of money, they are just changing the title.

It's not necessarily cost effective though. That's what I'm saying. In my case it's certainly not cost effective as they could pay me less to stay home than they pay me to go out to work.

I think rather than it being a case of cost effective for the government, it's cost effective for companies. Women are cheaper, having them in the workplace drives down wages. Having two parents working as the norm drives down wages. It used to be the norm that most families could survive on one wage, not anymore, we live in a low wage economy. I think pushing women into work is just an attempt to cover up just how low our wages are.

I think that high quality nursery provision is a benefit to children. In fact the goverant wants to extend the 15 hours provision to the lowest 40% of two year olds.

www.education.gov.uk/childrenandyoungpeople/earlylearningandchildcare/delivery/free%20entitlement%20to%20early%20education/b0070114/eefortwoyearolds

Surely if nursery care is so good for children then we need to look at ways to ensure that all children get the chance to go to nursery from the age of two.

When women step out of the work place a lot of skill and talent is lost. It is really hard to return to work and very few women earn as much as they did pre children.

What do you propose then, morethan, to enable a SAHP to attend an interview? Can you give some practical suggestions? This is a genuine question as personally I have no objection to the state paying for childcare for someone to attend an interview (if the company doesn't already cover this in interview expenses, which some do)

I presume you would need a bank of registered, enhanced CRB checked childcare providers with space to take on children 'ad hoc'. How would this work, given that they have ratios to adhere to, and can't be expected to keep places unfilled on the off chance someone wants a place.

Secondly, do you think parents would be happy to use such an arrangement? I honestly think many of them would not be happy to leave their child without all the usual settling in.

I also think the point made earlier is that if it's genuinely such a problem for a SAHM to attend an interview, then really the interview is the tip of the iceberg - it's only going to get tougher, once you're in work, and juggling with all the issues which crop up as a WOHP with no family nearby.... sick children, sick childminder, sudden school closure for snow... All these things are very real issues for us WOHP too. Also, when I was working 3 days a week (which I did when my children were pre school age) I regularly needed to attend training which fell on my days off when my children werent booked into nursery. If the nursery was full on those days, well, tough. My solution was to build up a network of friends and neighbours so that in these events there was a reasonable chance I could call in a favour. And yes, that takes time and effort and it's reciprocal... I did various babysitting favours in return.

But to return to the point about interviews, which is the only scenario where I can see a SAHM possibly justifying paid childcare (because frankly you can do your job searching and application forms on line when the kids are in bed) - can anyone provide some practical AND economically viable suggestions as to how this would work?

Janey

apologies, my last thread may have sounded goady. I didn't mean it to.
We just constantly hear about how the gov are making it cost effective to work and they are lying. If this was so they would be stopping mine and other sahp's money.
FWIW, I have taken the money and will continue to as long as I'm given it. I don't expect it though.
I do know that one comment that gets sahp's back up is when people (not you, I don't think) say that we expect the tax payer to pay. No we don't, but we do take the money as it would be madness to refuse.

Ah right, cross posts there with your last one morethan - you aren't looking for work.

But I am still interested in any ideas for how the interview thing would work for SAHM who genuinely want to get back into the workplace.... I think many people have no problem in principle with the idea of covering childcare to enable them to attend interview... just not sure how it's workable.

ffs..... I am a lone parent of 5. One of them is not yet at school. I work full time and run my own business on the side. The children's father is unwell and unable to work so I get no maintenance or visitation. My parents live over an hour away and both work full time so they can't help much on day to day basis.

Yet somehow I have managed to attend interviews for a job.....get a job, get promoted and then change jobs.......if you want to sah then that is great but I get really really irritated when people say they have no choice but to sah for various reasons.

And the argument for giving everyone £500 is ridiculous. The sahp gets the 500.... the working parent will still have to find another 500 plus on top of that to pay for the remainder of the childcare bill.

No worries ... it didn't come across as goady at all... I don't think anyone becomes a SAHM for the salary and career structure!!

I think that an interview is a bit of a red herring. Surely the SAHM is not Billetta Nomates and prehaps can ask a friend to baby sit.

If you are utterly sad and have no friends then prehaps you can use

www.sitters.co.uk

Or alternatively there is the free 15 hours when your child is three years old.

I see no reason for the governant to provide subsidised childcare to SAHMs. However I object to a system that spends a fotune to prevent a tiny number of SAHMs getting subsidised childcare. It is nuts to spend pounds paying bureaucrats to save pennies.

janey

I don't know, it is a difficult one. Its like my friend, I could help out occasionally but it could take a lot of interviews in this climate to find suitable work.
Maybe some sort of emergency childcare provision, but I know this wouldn't always be possible due to ratio levels. Maybe vouchers for a given time like say 3 months, and for potential employers being more flexible in attending interviews. Although I know this could be hard if they are all held on one day, because the interviewer had that allocation. There surely has to be something though otherwise some will be discriminated against. They could even lose benefit if they don't turn up for interview.

There is now a backlash re the Swedish utopia,tis not so good as it seems.

Re interviews for sahp,it has already been mentioned that it's not so much a one off interview but retraining,update training,volunteering,research,studying etc all of which need childcare for women or men to get back into the workplace.

Oh and sorry I don't buy the all 2 year olds needing childcare.If children are being raised in a normal environment then provision for 3 year olds is plenty.The vast maj of mums can provide what a nursery can and so much more for 2 year olds.

However those being raised in the few low literate vulnerable households that there are, nursery at 2 could benefit.This is exactly what the research says.It is only children from problem families that benefit from nursery at such a young age.

Some people just want to moan about unfairness.

Our school has a free breakfast club, which is HUGELY helpful if you are working. Tbh the fact that it is free is of secondary importance to the fact that it exists (I would have real problems with my job if I wasn't able to get there until 9.30).

You wouldn't believe the number of SAHMs who have told me how unfair it is that the breakfast club is free, in fact a number of them have said that they would consider using it just to get the free breakfast for their DC,even though they didn't need it. I just don't understand. Why in gods name would you want to get your kids to school before 8am when you didn't need to, just to make a point and save the price of a piece of toast. And these are not poverty stricken people, these are people who are too bothered about what other people are getting that their not.

We could all grumble about things other people get that we don't. For example, I need to work as DH doesn't earn enough to support us all, and I could grumble about my friends whose DH earn loads (or who earn loads themselves). But I don't. Life isn't fair, and we should save our bickering and condemnation for the real fat cats.

'Because it's always my DH and My DCs, Higher rate tax and losing their Child benefit, that subsidise the choice of families to use childcare'

Startail you do realise don't you that not all DHs are higher rate tax payers. In many families, both earners are on minimum wage, or not much above.

Sometimes reading these debates on MN, you'd think that the options re. SAHM/WOHM are:

*SAHM with higher rate tax payer DH, who doesn't need to work and disagrees with childcare.

*WOHM who want to 'farm out their children', so that they can both earn very slightly under the child benefit threshold, and take jobs from people who need them more.

FS - the vast majority are somewhere in the middle!

I don't think all 2 year olds need childcare... it's their parents who need it to enable them to work. And yes, mums do provide other things that nursery doesn't... luckily us WOHM know how to do that too. And - newsflash - so do dads!! I don't think nursery provides all sorts of things I can't do at home (though frankly action painting and a whole variety of pets including sheep and a goat were not my scene, so these were nice nursery 'extras' for my kids!) I simply found nursery a great experience alongside (NOT instead of) everything that is part and parcel of normal life

Now please don't feel obliged, anybody, to come back and tell me my children's nursery wasn't like that, really it was some dark dingy slum staffed by illiterates, which my children simply 'put up with' and 'got used to'. Because frankly it's going to make you look a bit desperate

Boo A free breakfast club? Is it a private school?

Totally agree reallytired

However I object to a system that spends a fotune to prevent a tiny number of SAHMs getting subsidised childcare.

Esp when in doing so they also prevent many families with a low earning partner getting the subsidy.