Who are these people that the government want to get back to work?

[MissHoneysHappyEnding]

As in, the workers who they hope will come back because of free childcare.
I don't know many mums that don't go back to work straight away.
The few I have met feel strongly about being at home and I don't think free hours would change that.
The ones (two) I have met who left jobs and would like to return but can't afford childcare are in healthcare and hospitality where regular shifts don't fit in with nursery opening times anyway.
Tbh and only in my opinion, a lot of the 'we can't afford childcare so I had to give up my job' crew are often told that by controlling DH/ DPs or don't really want to go back to work anyway. Happy to be proved wrong!

Prepare to be flamed. But I agree!

One of my colleagues has just gone on maternity leave to have baby number two.

She's thinking of not coming back because she can't afford childcare for two children.

So I'm guessing, people like her.

It will be interesting to see. My hunch is it won’t make much difference. I’ve recently tried to recruit for a post that fits school hours and pays real living wage. Thought it would really appeal to parents but hardly any applications so far.

Where's the staff coming from??

Agreed! There should be funding for breakfast, after school clubs and term holidays instead, that would actually help working mums to keep a job

It will be combined with much tougher rules on UC to force people.

There were news stories recently about getting over 50s back to work to help the economy. This referred to economically inactive people, so I am assuming people who had retired earlier than the state pension age.

there aren't enough flexible childcare-friendly jobs as it is, just for those with kids age 3+ up who are already getting free hours. An increase in people looking for jobs that can be done between 9:30 and 2:30 (allowing time for travel after nursery dropoff) termtime only isn't going to increase the workforce much. and adding on hours to make a viable longer working day often ends up almost as expensive as it would have been without the "free" hours.

I left a high paying professional job after having my second baby.

Childcare for 2 at that point would have cost us just under £2000 a month. We could afford it, but with commuting costs (which for my role could be really high and relied on timely claiming and paying of expenses) it wouldn't have been adding much to our family pot.

Add to that, my going back to work would have put our family earnings over the threshold for tax free childcare and the 30 hours.

I didn't love my job enough for my family to be only a couple of hundred quid a month better off.

If I had loved my job I could have gone back to work.

Then covid hit about 2 months after I was due back to work. Both of us working from home in big jobs with a 3 and 1 year old and no childcare ... I think that would have broken both of us. It broke several of my friends and all of them were failing at home and at work. They all had to reduce working hours and reduce pay. Many of us were also still paying some kind of retainer fee for our nursery place.

Because I don't work we only get 15 hours for our youngest. When she's in full time school in September I'm going back to uni to retrain in a career that I can do around school hours.

I won't be earning the mega bucks I was BUT I will be adding about the same to the family pot once you discount the childcare costs.

If we'd been able to get 30 hours for our youngest sooner, I likely would have gone back to work sooner.

I thought it was over 50s who have retired early for whatever reason (some to care for an elderly parent)?

Single parents.
My plans rely heavily on the free hours DS will get this September.

@Londontoderby agree

Yes agreed.

The other problem is that nurseries near me cannot recruit staff so have had to reduce the number of places available. The cost per hour that nurseries are reimbursed by the government will need to go up, because they simply cannot recruit the staff on the current rates.

And the other problem I see is that there are hardly any registered child minders in my area any more. I don’t know what it’s like elsewhere?

Those who are critically vulnerable to covid (for whom the government refuses to fund Evusheld - a prophylactic treatment that would allow them to return to return to workplaces with the same safety as vaccinated people) number between 500k and 1m.

Also there are (estimates vary) around 2m people with long covid, which leads all to often to giving up or sharply scaling back participation in the workforce.

No-one wants to talk about disease impact though.

I work for a nursery agency, there is a massive staff retention crisis.

Where do they think all of the workers will come from to provide this free childcare?

The ratios and costs for under ones is huge so I hope the government gives more money than what they currently give the 3-4 provision.

i think it’s the Government posturing and pretending that there is a solution to the current, largely self-inflicted skills and labour shortages. I did some work on the horticultural industry a couple of years ago when they were warning about this and asking the Government to issue more licences for non-UK workers to pick fruit and veg. The Government told them to employ more locals but on closer examination, local labour turns out to be mothers who can’t do the shifts, students who can’t do the full season or older people who just aren’t fit enough to do the work.

@Twizbe you know the earnings thresholds apply to an individual not household income? You can both earn £99k and qualify.

There's lots of research that shows lack of affordable childcare stops women (not men though, natch) from returning to work

Anything that helps that is a good thing

However as it's the tories I don't it will be done well

The problem is the gap between the type of people required and the type of people who choose not to work. The pandemic spurred a lot of people to retire early - by definition, people who had good salaries beforehand to be able to retire early. These aren't the sort of people there is a huge requirement for though - businesses aren't struggling to recruit in highly paid roles, they're struggling to recruit in minimum wage/zero hour contract roles. The 100K systems analyst isn't going to take a minimum wage job cleaning office toilets or fruit-picking.

@ChungusBoi no childminders available in my area either. All either full, retired, quit for something else or on mat leave. Used to be loads when my eldest was wee. Nurseries are rammed but always recruiting staff. It's scary.

Same in my area, different industry but the pool of people who want the work and are capable of it is quite small.

You're right, I got that bit wrong - 2020 seems like a lifetime ago. I remembered that our income meant we were going to lose the funding but in my head it was the family income.

My husbands income had tipped over the threshold had tipped over (only 1 of you had to be over it) and mine was getting iffy as I'd been promoted while on maternity leave.

I remembered that we were going to lose the 30 hours whether I worked or not.

Yes, it seems as though the plan will have limited impact if there aren’t enough providers to offer extra places.

To those who retired early if they were able to do that and don't want to work anymore why shouldn't they, provided they can afford to use savings and not be living off benefits.