To think military families should be offered extra funded childcare provisions?

[PFB1]

I am a military wife and although being a soldier is a choice and in my opinion, you're not automatically owed anything for making that choice, I really feel as though child care is such an issue for military spouses.

The problem is, we move frequently, which makes it harder for spouses to have a successful career. We often live hundreds of miles from family so we have no offers of free childcare there, the communities we live in are so transient. Our friends move away, new people arrive. When a friendship reaches the point where you might be comfortable asking for help with childcare, it's likely one of you will end up being posted miles away.

On top of these issues, your spouse can be sent away at a moments notice for anything up to 9 months.

I think so many military spouses underachieve from a career point of view because it feels like there are just so many hurdles in your way. I think extra funded childcare for military families would be a wonderful idea to give spouses more opportunities to succeed.

I appreciate childcare is a touchy subject and difficult for many families to afford/juggle. I just think it would be a huge help to service families to have some additional support in that area.

I'd love to try to contact relevant organisations to discuss whether this is something we could propose but I firstly wanted to get an idea of if the general public would be unhappy about this.

Otterses - I think something like that would be excellent. I'm actually an ex-recruitment consultant and I know there are many admin jobs which could potentially be done remotely. If there was an organisation who tried to source this type of job on behalf of military spouses, that would be a fantastic step forward. I've had a look at recruit for spouses and they really don't seem to advertise much. They seem very quiet. There needs to be people getting in front of Directors and CEO's to see if they would be interested in having military spouses work remotely for them. At the end of the day, it should save money for companies in the sense that they don't need to have a desk, computer etc in the office or they can potentially have less office space. They could even pay a slightly lower salary as no commute for the employee. That would be amazing but I wouldn't have the know how to be able to set something like that up myself unfortunately.

I don’t agree, one of us has a career path needing many years of constant moving so the other set out to establish a career that is home based, making a planned career change over a few years. Skilled, well paid home based work is eminently possible but you have to plan a path to it and accept a few years of office work establishing yourself first.

That's pretty much where I've fallen flat too PFB1 - I'd not know where to begin generating enough jobs for demand. I just feel like there are so many scams out there, and along I think military spouses (and mothers in general) are really at risk when trying to look for something to fit in with family life.

Maybe we need to drum up some more interest in building something like this. There's bound to be people out there who would want to get involved

Your idea of a military spouses remote-working agency sounds really good. How about pitching it to the Legion?

It’s difficult to see how unskilled work that can be done remotely wouldn’t already be outsourced overseas to cheaper places. People with skills amenable for uk home working presumably already work from home.

Would this be better approached by helping people develop careers towards home working?

@AlexaShutUp the thing with military families is the frequent moving and often (it's hard to generalise of course) little say you can have in a posting, we haven't once been sent where we wanted to go, and it's always in the sticks where you're likely looking at commuting on top of childcare. I'm guessing lot of civilian jobs that require moving around enable more choice and more populous areas?

If I'd have stayed with my previous employer, I'd have had to sign a global mobility contract that would have required me to move every 2-3 years to wherever in the world I was needed - no choice as to where. The money was good, and there were other perks such as subsidised accommodation for overseas postings, but ultimately, I decided that it wasn't fair on my family so I sought alternative employment instead. My point is, we all have choices, and nobody is forced into that life. If it doesn't suit, then do something else.

Quite possibly asd! I occasionally come across remote jobs advertised in customer service in banking and for start ups, but there's never a huge amount of them. I think you're right, a lot is outsourced. The idea of training people specifically to aim to work from home is a really good idea though.

Mpsw I I feel like it's I'd want to present with a proper plan with clear aims - it's certainly something I want to look into at some point. This thread really has inspired me again

@PFB1 - I had to pay the privilege of £1400 a month for those conditions, at one point we had rooms covered in mould, ceilings covered in mould, walls covered.

Yes, people do have to pay a lot of money to live like that. We live in London, have no choice due to my DP's job and we have to rent privately and it was so hard to be able to get out of that rental contract and in the end we only got out of it because I ended up in hospital.

I grew up around one of the UK's biggest barracks, I have worked as childcare help with army families and yes, it is awful when they go and you do go through a lot but so does everyone else.

Here's an idea: we properly fund high quality childcare for everyone. Everyone wins!