Why nurseries never open at the weekends?

[Daydreamreve]

My kids are older now but I hear my friends, some of whom work weekends, saying that they find it hard to find childcare at the weekend when they’re on shift.

why don’t nurseries open at the weekends?

Excellent question, I think they'd be full!

I could just imagine people take the piss, put them in nursery then go drinking or whatever.

Because nobody wants to pay (even) more for childcare in unsociable hours. I'm a childminder and would not want to work weekends.

The difficulty I think is mainly that people who work weekends, do so in shift form so wouldn't need childcare every weekend consistently so a logistical nightmare to get the balance of carers for the number of children that will attend & therefore have a viable business model

How many staff do you think want to work on weekends in a nursery? It’s hard enough to find suitable nursery staff for weekday daytime hours.

How is that taking the piss if they are paying for the childcare?

I'd imagine the nurseries would be under used most weekends making the costs of hearing, lighting, minimum staff, chef etc all too much.

When my DC were small even the nursery at the hospital I worked in was only open for office hours. Utterly useless for their many shift workers.

In an ideal world, nurseries could be open every day from early til late and weekends too. Staff could be incentivised to work the off-peak shifts with an off-peak bonus. Rates would be higher for off-peak too. They'd need to have a much bigger bank of staff.

But, obviously this will never happen due to general staffing levels and lack of funding. This country really doesn't care that much about kids.

i know if one nursery (or child care here in the US) that is open on the weekends and late into the evenings. I notice it services people that work shifts or retail and they are usually full.

Because shift workers who need every single Saturday, for normal nursery hours and pay a higher hourly rate to encourage staff who work in the week to take on additional /unappealing weekend work - are rare enough to make it unappealing for businesses to offer this.

I do know a couple of childminders who have offered Saturday care before, but generally they don’t have families wanting every Saturday and it does limit what they can do with their own dcs.

Ok. I'd not thought it through!

I don't think there would be enough demand. You need a certain amount of children in to make opening worth while. It's also why many nurseries don't open very early or very late. The majority of people want mon-fri between 8 and 6.

They do. We have a couple specifically for shift and unsociable hours workers here.

Not enough demand.

Not enough staff.

If it made good business sense they would open, it obviously doesn't!

I imagine Nannies and au pairs work on the weekend

A nursery where we live trailed this a couple of years ago, it didn't last long though I don't think there was enough demand for it.
I used to work in a nursery and we had parents ask, twice that I can remember, why we didn't do overnight care.

Supply and demand

I saw one of these once (in London) actually, many moons ago. But there aren't enough people in the childcare workforce for the current offering, let alone extending the hours. It's very hard to work outside office hours if you don't have a partner or grandparents who can do the childcare while you work. This is why couples who are both, say, doctors, often have a nanny while their children are small, even if it takes a huge chunk of their earnings.

Surely if someone is paying a company to mind their dc for x amount of hours, how the parents then choose to spend that time is nobody's business?

I think the location has to be right and demand takes a while to build up and there isn't enough money in childcare to play the long game building up the demand (even if the staff were available and willing to work at weekends or evenings themselves). Agencies like Sitters are doing a good trade for this among other reasons but away from large towns and cities it's very hard.

how the parents then choose to spend that time is nobody's business?

So long as they are fit to take charge of the children when they return, this is absolutely right.

There’s a nursery near me that does overnight and weekend care. It’s close to a hospital so presumably they got a lot of their demand from people who work shifts there.

I'm a nursery nurse in a large chain and one branch used to open on Saturdays. It got a lot of demand but they found that many kids were being left in nursery 10+ hours a day, 6 days a week, having all their meals in nursery and basically just going home to sleep. The Saturday opening hours were taken away then as some children were really struggling being in nursery 60- 70 hours a week.

It was an awful idea to begin with tbh. I'm glad they stopped it for the sake of those poor kids and on a more selfish note, I don't want to work weekends. Nursery staff have lives and need a break too. Honestly some parents expect us to do everything (I don't mean anyone on this thread, just in a general sense), and a lot of them would like us to work nights as well as weekends.

Nurseries want money and the most efficient way to earn it is to offer only weekday care. Nobody gives a fuck about anyone else.

The Nursery could have capped attendance to five days oer week per child.

Taking away the popular Saturdays just means those who work Saturdays are screwed again.

A lot of the folks who work in jobs at weekends do so because it means they don't need to pay out for childcare, as they can work opposite days to other family members.

There was a Nursery near here that tried offering weekends and late into the evenings, but they just didn't get enough take up to make it sustainable.