Aibu to think it will work being a single parent and retraining as a mental health nurse?

[Meticular]

I work in the NHS, but within a band 5 Admin role which I love. One of my executives commented that I'd be well suited to nursing purely based on my communication and interpersonal skills.. I'm a very caring person by nature.. I wouldn't consider myself to be academic, but I am intelligent in the sense I've picked up a lot of stuff along the way in life. My written work is accurate and rarely needs any amendments.
My executive made the inference that they would support me if I decided to take up a nursing degree and I have a strong passion for mental health.
One of my colleagues is in her late 50s, she told me she wasn't very bright at school, at 40 she retrained in nursing and did a masters and is now doing a PhD, so I know it's never too late.
I'd love to retrain as a mental health nurse, but how feasible would it be as a single parent to a 3 year old. Father isn't involved in her life so I'm solely responsible for her. I'm guessing if I'm on placement and doing night shifts it won't work, will it?

No unless you’vea supportive network then you can’t possibly do nursing shifts and placements for the same reason I didn’t do midwife training. You can do other healthcare roles though, there’s OT or PT for starters and most placements and lots of jobs are 9-5 weekdays.

Lots of single parents on my nursing course. Placements are flexible.

I'd go for OT over mental health nursing if you are interested in mental health.

I'm a mental health nurse. I trained way before I had kids and to be honest, I'm not sure I could have done my training if I had them.

On placement, it's very often a variety of early or late shifts and once you get to 2nd year, the odd week of nights as well. I think without reliable, supportive childcare that can help out of "normal" hours, it could be a struggle.

Even now I'm qualified, I work permanent nights as mixing shifts was too hard to sort childcare around my husbands job.

Sorry if my post seems really negative... There were lots of people with children on my course so it is obviously doable for people but I can imagine logistically it's hard.

The NHS has great policies on supportive an being flexible with parents and carers (even when there are two). e.g. If your child is ill and you ring in to say you can’t come in due to that, it’s most likely that you will be given carers leave. You will also have a log-in for your NHS laptop to access patient records at home. Go for it!

Honestly, as a HCP in the nhs, I’d say no. You’ll be working shift patterns totally incompatible with childcare. Also expected to work Christmas Day (makes no difference that you’re a single mum), who would you leave her with? I would consider a similar caring role without the awful shift patterns-physio, OT, sonographer etc.

Agree with the other posters sorry, it's not just the student placements - where you need to be present at shift handover, so you can't just negotiate a later start/earlier finish routinely as it'd affect your learning - but once you're qualified, you'd be working on the wards which means a shift pattern. There are some roles in MH nursing that are fixed hours but they tend to be more specialised and competitive (as many people want them for the same reason!)

I'd second other suggestions to look at routes into OT or mental health social work if those might be possible for you.

I trained as a midwife as a a single parent (they were 10, 5 and 4 when I started). I don't have any family nearby so I spent a lot of money on childcare over the 3 years, some of it was funded, some of it wasn't. I have a close friend nearby who was able to be my emergency person if one of the kids was ill or whatever.
It's hard, a massive juggle but doable. I graduated with a 1st and now work in a community role 9-5.