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?

@Sandiecheeks thank you for your perfect calculation that is exactly what I needed as it is 25 hrs a week of wrap around care I need!

It currently costs me £18 per day so £90 a week and I pay with vouchers so svae 20%. However £105 a week would be doable I think so it may well be something we need to look into. Dd will be furious if she has to give up her bedroom though 😩

I don’t understand how the government haven’t really realised their plans will be utterly shit for working parents

They know. There is about to be mass unemployment. Who does disappointment better, men or women? Women of course. Less unrest.

Just as per the post war period, men will be prioritised for the few jobs available in order to ensure public order. Married women will sink back into the quicksand of the home and total financial dependency which abusers will rapidly exploit. Single mothers will sink...or swim which other abusers will seek to exploit.

I'm already considering that I'll need a nanny, if I still have a job, but trying not to give it too much thought until that expensive moment is truly upon me. 🤔

School staff will be unable to manage if this is the case. We can have school places as key workers but our hours mean we can’t manage without wrap around. What do we do?

Yes the lack of wrap around care will also mean many teachers won't actually have any childcare for their own children to allow them to work to teach anyone else's. I think my head might actually explode trying to imagine this working for anyone!

some organisations, such as the Scouts, have expressed an interest.
Last time they were asked to do something under contract from the govt it turned out they were planning to pay facilitators to get extra volunteers; turns out there aren't armies of volunteers waiting to be asked, especially not in the areas that really needed Scouting.

Anyway, our DD school hasn't said anything about KW children not having after school club any more and the club itself (that is doing the KW/vulnerable wrap around) has checked what we need after half term. But the first week is KW year group bubbles so who knows after that.

It's almost like the govt hadn't fully thought this through before making the announcement...

Same here.
Luckily I’ve managed to change to school hours only for the foreseeable but I’m starting a new job in July and I don’t really know what I’m going to do to be honest! That’s before we start worrying about the school holidays!
My amazing childminder was collecting from school but she has been told no mixing settings and the school wraparound provision isn’t open for the same reason.

some organisations, such as the Scouts, have expressed an interest

I can't find the post that was quoted from but how could Scouts provide anything different to what after school carers would normally provide?

Scout leaders are volunteers often with their own work, children and childcare issues to sort.

Yes, useful quote from SandieC, although many parents do not want someone living in their home. The person above suggesting this short term return might be very very short term could be right - we might have right old mess on 1 June with nothing to help full time working parents including 1.4m NHS staff and 500,000 teachers many of whom are mothers with chidlren; then the state realises half the nurses and teachers are at home looking after their children and that it may be politically difficult if it stops their pay, that the virus infection rate is very low now (it is certainly very low now in London) and by 15 June suggests full return with few restrictions on timing and no bubbles any more or at least perhaps not for child minders after English schools break up who could then return to their normal summer holiday routines and work.

Xenia it would certainly be good to think that we will open the country back up as quickly as it went into lockdown.

I can't see it being quite so quick but you never know.

I think you're right, @xenia, although how the govt could not be aware of the gender/parent breakdown in schools and hospitals just beggars belief.

I really do not want to see the country open up that quickly. I don't think it's safe, and if there are huge crowds in town I will not feel safe going out for essentials, I wouldn't send my DCs to class parties so they'd miss out etc.

how could Scouts provide anything different to what after school carers would normally provide?
The original quote was about the summer, but they couldn't.

My DH is a scout leader but he works 9-5 every day, including the summer. He couldn’t volunteer to provide child care and I wouldn’t want him or any other scout leader offering any form of schooling unless it was sports activities and outdoor stuff.

As a school we aren't providing wrap around care as that is an external company. They are not reopening at this time. Therefore we can't offer it as an option .

The Lea has told us that we should not run breakfast club (which is 30 min in a morning) as that involves mixing the bubbles and won't fit in with the staggered starts for parents.

Individual teachers have absolutely nothing to do with the Lea or school planning. They are just told whether they should attend school or not, and which classes they'll be teaching.

We are in the same boat, both key workers.... we rely on breakfast and after school clubs and holiday clubs.
It’s been doable at the moment as a key worker He has been going to school- holidays included as the school has remained open.

The school based breakfast and after club have said they won’t reopen. The private one we paid for for school holidays I know won’t reopen as they just don’t have the space.... six school holidays are looming so what are we supposed to do?
We used holiday clubs as we have no family close by so that’s not an option......
It’s an untenable situation.

I think my DCs' schools have both been told they should be providing wrap around care, because in my DS school there is half term care (normally nothing) and in my DD school it's being administered by school though run by the usual group.
But as I say no word on what will happen when the bubbles are in place because DD school is not letting back nursery/YR/Y1/Y6 yet

@milkysmum - I’m in the same boat as you. If you can find one, a nanny isn’t necessarily too expensive. Check entitledto.co.uk for an idea of what support you could get. UC covers a lot of my childcare costs because they are so insanely high at the minute. I’d guess my salary is similar to yours (also frontline emergency services). Good luck!

@needahandwithuc you could only get help towards your nanny costs if they were Ofsted registered and this isn't instant to do. People need childcare much quicker than this otherwise even more people are going to lose their jobs.

DH and I are both keyworkers with inflexible working times, and we rely on breakfast and teatime clubs which aren't reopening. We only found out on Thursday that they were cutting down the key worker provision to normal school hours and I have no idea what to do. No family nearby or willing to help.

I'm a teacher and we're only opening for mornings from 1st June. By the time I've dropped the DC off at 8.45 and driven to work, I'll have missed the first session.

And before long my school will want us in for the afternoons too, so that will mean missing the last lesson as well.

I can't sleep for worrying about it.

Lots of schools were managing extended hours by having staff working in shifts but now more pupils are coming in they don’t have the staff to do this and remain in bubbles. Lots of teachers will also struggle , headteacher are having a nightmare trying to juggle everything. The government have literally said “This is what you need to do get on with it” with no thought to the logistics. And then schools are being criticised for not being creative.

Critical workers should be complaining loudly about this. Not to schools but to your MPs. I explained earlier that my school staff were more than happy working in shifts to provide extra hours for essential key workers. But they just can’t do that if we have to take in more children.

Is it the MP or the local councillor who we should speak to? Sorry if that's a silly question.

I'm currently unemployed, I'm wondering if I should go into the holiday nanny market based on these posts . Extensive experience of angry sen kids (mine now grown) what do you think?