Do you have back up childcare

[Emeraldrings]

If you have a child of nursery age or young primary school do you have back up childcare option?
If they are sick and you have to collect them do you have people you can leave your children with?
Or do you and your partner (if you have one)sort it between you? I have zero back up except for DH and work are always on my back when I need time off. Are we that unusual to not have back up childcare?
Just to add DH does more than 50%of sick days so it's not like it's me who always has time off

I’m the one who gets sick a lot and I rely on other school parents to collect DS for me, and I reciprocate for them when I can/school holidays I have theirs when they are working as I work pt.

Grandparents all live 45-60 mins away and are busy so fine for a planned in advance pick up but not when I’m vomiting and can’t walk 20 minutes before pick up.

luckily DS is rarely ill but I would wfh if he was.

Short-term, no. We both take the day off and work half each typically.

We have emergency childcare to collect him from nursery if we are unable to get there within 45-50 mins, but haven’t had to use it yet.

For something like chicken pox etc where it would be a few days, we’d have to pay for one of my parents to fly down.

In our case, grandparents either live too far away or are still working full time. So it falls to me and dh. Any reasonable employer shouldn't be putting you under pressure unless you're off an exceptional amount and even then should fall under carers leave.

No but thankfully we can both WFH whenever so we'd go collect her, get her settled etc and work around her needs, work are great which we're very grateful for.

one Set of grandparents available if their schedule happens to be open, but they lead very busy lives, so that help is largely theoretical.

dd has a chronic illness that led to a great deal of calls from the school and sick days. The only way we managed was by me working half-time and having flexible hours.

No, apart from my ex (co-parenting).

I take annual leave or unpaid parental leave. My work has never complained about this. I work from home usually anyway, but I wouldn't get any work done while also attempting to look after a sick child.

There was a time when one child had to go into hospital for several days and was seriously ill, and my work gave me that time off as compassionate leave.

No back up here either! Luckily our work have been quite good but we also take it in turns. I also have a day off mid week which sometimes helps when little one is poorly.

Grandparents and SIL/BIL. DH can work from home in emergencies

Zero back up here.

I have very supportive work. For example, childminder is on holiday soon and I still have to cover one day of her leave. My employer knows I'll be wfh with my toddler. I'm sure they are not expecting great productivity that day but they know I'll make it up.

No back up, If one of my friends happens to be off work they would collect in an emergency but DP is default if we are both at work as he can wfh. My DM could come and watch him with a day or so notice if he was going to be off school for a few days. Our child is in reception so DP can manage to work with him at home.

No back up, but DH and I have jobs that can both WFH if needed and have supportive employers so we are able to muddle through. I've never had to take annual leave for a sick child, have used special leave here and there.

In a pinch grandparent's but I don't like to risk it for illness.
We split days between me and dh and luckily I work somewhere where my colleagues and I swap shifts somewhat easily.

Definitely hard when you dont have it. Being sahm took this stress off. Not all bosses nice about it either. You lucky if you have family help.

No, it's just us. It's one of the reasons we both work part-time so we only have two days a week we are both at work. Reduces the issues. It was significantly harder before then when DH was still full-time. His employer is much more understanding and flexible than mine so he does the bulk of the sick days with them as annual leave. My employer insists I'd have to take it as unpaid leave which would leave us out of pocket with the nursery fees. I'm a much lower earner than him too for context.

I'm super jealous of those who have supportive employer's. I've been threatened with disciplinary action if I'm off with DS again.

Are you in a union op? If not it sounds like it's time to join one.

No no one and I’m a lone parent. All falls on me

Just us - but tbf how often between you are you needing to be off? We split the sick days pretty 50/50 and haven't had to take much time at all really. Kids are now 7 and 3.

I could ask my parents, 2 of the kids aunties and a friend. There's a couple of mam's at the school I could ask to pick up too if I had some sort of emergency meaning I couldn't get there for pick up.

Grandparents who are happy to take them when ill depending what it is.

Sickness - no.
When they both had chickenpox a couple of weeks apart earlier this year - yes.
Generic virus with fever and generally feeling a bit crap - yes.

But they are back ups for if it's really hard for us to get the time off work, not an automatic go to whenever DDs are ill. Chickenpox for example DD2 had to be off nursery for over nearly two weeks but was actually fine apart from being very spotty. They helped out a lot then.

Mine have grown up now but now we had no-one but us, then just me when ex DP went to work overseas

That's so crap OP, how's today?

We have no backup, our families are 1.5 and 2.5 hours away. Fortunately we have very flexible jobs and are mostly able to sync our diaries so that only one of us has something unmissable in a day.

I have no idea how we would've coped if I was still in my old job with tracked leave and hours. Winter 2020/21 with PCR testing and isolation for every dose would have gotten me fired.

Does anyone seriously leave a sick child with a stranger who makes their living going from one contagious child to another?

You are entitled to unpaid parental leave for under 5s if you have no holiday left I'd make a complaint.