Childcare being removed for key workers

[Mia1415]

My DS has been going to school and his childminder during lockdown.

I was informed yesterday that from 1st June you are only allowed to send children to 1 setting a week (so school or childminder).

Whilst I can understand the logic of not wanting children to mix bubbles I am really annoyed about this as:

• giving key workers 1 weeks notice that they will be loosing childcare isn't really acceptable
• are key workers no longer deemed important?
• It can take up to 14 days to display covid symptoms so allowing 1 week in school, following by a week with a childminder doesn't really prevent anything
• One of the key points of getting children back to schools is so that parents can get back to work. At my school the years that are going back in initially are only doing 2 days a week, so if wraparound care is banned how is that helping people get back to work?
• I can understand this rule a bit more for children that are just returning to school, but not for children that have been going to both throughout lockdown.

(I have emailed my MP and local council about this and I'm awaiting a response).

AIBU?

That is outrageous of the school to make that decision. There is no guidance that says that only resident parents should collect a child from school.

I agree @nannynick I feel really sorry for my KW friends

Also how is the school to know if your childminder has moved in with the family or the daily nanny has become a live in nanny and therefore in the same household/bubble anyway. Also I had 3 children over 10 years older than younger ones who often did things like drive to school to collect siblings (we were all living at home and that is not a parent collecting but surely is fine as people live together)

@toomanykidstocount
Clearly the issue over whether childminders should be permitted is a contentious one but please don't try and muddle it with the right of a NRP to see their children. At all stages of the pandemic the government has gone out of its way to ensure children can see both parents so it is clearly against the guidelines to prevent NRP to collect their own children in a way that it simply isn't when it comes to child minders.

I'm so shocked by what I am reading here from some schools. What on earth are people meant to do!

Also the ignorance of some posters, just get furloughed. Er yeah OK. Apart from I can't, am not an employee am a public servant so can't happen.

My husband and dd's dad both also key workers but working days only but 9-5.30 which is how we are currently able to work with them sorting out the drop off and pick up between them when I am on shift.

So if our school brought in the rule about nobody picking up who isn't in the household we'd literally be fucked as dd dad wouldn't be able to collect? As she is more resident with us even though she actually has two households that she travels between.

This is all fucked. I'm trying to find out what my local authority has said to childcare providers.

Oh strange @statisticalsense we picked up on the same point at the same time there

I’m not hugely surprised to be honest. DS is in a 3 form entry infant school, and in normal times his wraparound care provision takes him, three others from 2 other classes in his year, then a couple from the year above (from different classes), then a few from the junior school (different years and classes). Even putting aside the staggered start and finish times, it would be impossible to care for all of the ones who’ll be going back without mixing up the bubbles, and there will be other wraparound carers with exactly the same issue. If carers were all allowed to provide wraparound provision as normal, there would be no point in the bubbles at all.

I suppose when it was just keyworkers’ children, they were mostly associating together anyway even if different years, so then if a couple of them went to the childminder together, it wouldn’t have been an issue.

I agree that it’s incredibly difficult though - it’s not going to be much help for anyone who couldn’t work because they had no childcare. The only people it will help are parents who can wfh who have also been looking after their very young children - these parents will now have 2 or 3 days or even more when for 6 hours at least they can get on with things, even if they still have to do the school run and work for a couple of hours after the school run with their child at home again.

I agree and furlough is not some kind of right., eg I cannot get it as am a sole trader, self employed. Also you can only be furloughed if you don't have work to do at work and in many employments which are not pubs etc there is a lot of work to be done so having people doing nothing is not going to work.

Plenty of children live half the week with each parent and have continued this lawfully throughout too as mentioned above.

I suspect there is going to be a huge market over the summer for some kind of all day childcare provision, much more so than in most years.

My school has bent over backwards to support the very essential key workers with covering childcare to match their shifts. Mainly NHS workers. Now we are being asked to open for TOO MANY children and cannot maintain the extended hours childcare rota we were working to. Every single one of my teachers and TAs were working outside of normal school hours to facilitate the childcare required and were happy to do so on a sensible rota for a smallish number of children. This isn’t possible now as they’re all needed to teach ‘bubbles’. We are are frustrated by this as the essential key worker families.

I suspect there is going to be a huge market over the summer for some kind of all day childcare provision, much more so than in most years.

I'm worried about the opposite. I don't think many holiday clubs etc will open. I'm dreading the summer holidays.

Robert Halfon, MP, ahs this slightly half baked idea about summer schools : it may come to nothing as some other MPs seem to find him an irritant but it is certainly circulating as an idea and some organisations, such as the Scouts, have expressed an interest.

Our school plans to continue offering care for KW/vulnerable children who aren't in the year-groups scheduled to return.

Childminders have been collecting some children all along and this has not been seen as an issue as they don't come into the building anyway.

The only change I've heard mentioned is that where one sibling is in a returning year-group, they may need to stay in the KW bubble with their non-returning sibling instead of joining their year group.

Suddenly having new last-minute changes sprung on them is exactly what schools have been facing throughout the entire period. Headteachers only found out about the school closures at the same time as everyone else. They had a single weekend to organise childcare for KW and vulnerable children.

They asked for 3 weeks notice of opening, and the guidance for that opening has been changing throughout that notice period. No doubt there will still be more to come.

And this time the councils are making their own interpretations on a Bank Holiday weekend just as the half term holiday is also due to begin (here, at least). How is anyone (schools, parents, childcare providers) supposed to plan around that?

They won't be able to ignore them though will they? A childminder will refuse to take children who have been in school if they are the rules, they aren't going to risk their registration.

Childminders might not want to ignore the rules as they have an registation to protect
But that doesn't stop the Furloughed / Unemployed Mum at the end of the street providing "essential care for vulnerable people" aka babysitting.

@blackbear19 they would only be able to do that in the key worker child's own house though, ie work as a nanny or babysitter. Technically you don't need any quals, documentation or literally anything to do this, so you're right.

But the care couldn't be provided in their own home and they'd need to be a childminder.

This sort of peach in the guidance just shows what a muddle the whole thing is :

Once early years and childcare providers open to more children, all staff and children who are attending a childcare setting will have access to a test if they display symptoms of coronavirus, and are encouraged to get tested in this scenario.

This is for children under 5...?

This is ridiculous and if it continues will kill after school care providers stone dead - at the moment the vast majority are in hibernation with staff furloughed, but from August the expectation is that companies start contributing to the salaries. If they aren't allowed to operate because of rules like this they will have to make staff redundant or go under.

if it continues will kill after school care providers stone dead -

That's my fear - the provision will die out full stop. There used to be a muddle of after-school providers here - a couple of the Day nurseries had provision but they all shut up shop when on-site provision started so now there is nothing else. I used to have an unofficial childminder but a local busybody shopped her to Ofsted because she looked after one under 8 (not mine) for slightly over 2 hours a day so she won't do it now.

The whole thing is a mess. They want to get people back to work and phase out furlough but don't want children mixing or official childcare.

People will do whatever they can to hold on to income, the neighbours, the grandparents, the furloughed mum at the end of the street.

I would use a local person if I could find one. None of DC's friends are back at school and are all working from home - the last thing they want to do is come out specially to pick up extra children to make noise while they're trying to work. Family all miles away. I guess I can advertise locally but I'm not leaving my kids with any old stranger. Also no use if schools so only members of the household can pick up!

I think hope employers will be prepared to be a bit flexible in the short-term (in my case, my school isn't offering any wraparound care either so it can't really complain if staff are having childcare problems for the same reason). Long-term they aren't going to be as flexible though, so there needs to be a much better plan by September.

Ffs how are people ever supposed to get back to work?

My kids primary offers wraparound for keyworker children. When YR,1&6 return, children in those years can choose whether to stay with other kw children and still access wraparound, or go with their year group but have no access to wraparound. People like me who usually use wraparound will still have no access to is because they're only offering it to the kw children.

This seems the correct interpretation of the guidelines to me.

Childminders have been seeking clarification on this issue for two weeks. We are still waiting for guidance from the DforE.

The lack of coherent guidance means that schools and childminders are put in an impossible position. We're expected to find solutions ourselves and ensure that groups mix as little as possible. It's our responsibility to keep the children and ourselves safe. If we get it wrong, our insurance is invalid and we are held liable.

It's my understanding that key workers are to be prioritised.

The scenario where a child attends school and is picked up by a childminder may seem harmless enough, but consider the situation for childminders and nurseries who provide out of school care for several settings.
We collect from a number of schools and nurseries; we have offered care to keyworkers; we're expected to provide places for all children, including those who would normally attend during the holidays and can't return to school yet.
Added to that is the problem of some schools not offering full time places: just one day a week for three schools - we're being asked to pick up the slack. We're not the only ones.

That is a lot of children from various places. Absolutely, we cannot collect from all our usual settings at the moment: it would be ridiculous to carefully keep children in a bubble throughout the day, then mix with other schools and other children after school.

I assume that it's this conundrum that is holding up the advice from the DforE. There isn't a uniform way of working for childminders and they have to cover all the options.

However, it has meant that, with little or no guidance, schools and LAs have had to fill in the blanks. We're all trying to keep the children and ourselves safe. Employers will need to be flexible this term. They can't expect that life will return to normal just yet.

Stat, what will need to be examined is the legislation. Eg the current regulations (the law) make no mention of 2 meters and the English regs have never restricted people to once a day exercise (the Welsh ones do) and the Government has kept saying things it would like but which aren't actually the law.

The complication for childcare providers is some (not all) are regulated and have to follow guidelines so I suppose a local authority might be more difficult than another one whereas a nanny in your house is not regulated in the same way.

It will end up being an issue which discriminates against women if we are not careful and thus might be subject to a legal challenge with perhaps loads of women sacked in effect because they have children whilst older women and men aren't treated that way and not really the employer fault - but the state's fault or the school's fault.

Anyway if I were a parent of a school age child now I would be looking for a live in (UK) au pair for over the summer and beyond even if that meant I had to bring my children to sleep in my room to free up room for one, if I earned enough to cover that cost. I would also be looking at sixth formers and students - we had some very good people from a local sixth form who used to look after the twins on Saturday and Sunday mornings for a few years when they were little.

The summer holidays won't be such a problem. There will be no mixing of settings and term-time only children will not attend.

A live in au pair is impractical for most people.

I would also be looking at sixth formers and students

This is something I am considering. Is it legal though? I'd be happy to leave my 4yo with an older teenager I had met and trusted for a few hours (I start work at 9 and dp gets home at 3) but how would I go about paying them legally?

TrustTheGeneGenie - Yes it could be done in a legal way.
If it is their only source of income and they earn less than £120 per week (the Lower Earnings Limit for National Insurance) then no reporting to HMRC is required.

If they earn £120 or more in ANY week, then HMRC reporting IS required... so you could do that using PAYE Basic Tools, payroll software, or by using the services of a nanny payroll company. This would result in you becoming registered as an employer. Nanny payroll providers will have useful info on their websites about employer responsibilities.