If your childcare provider has closed

[Peanut55]

Has your employer furloughed you?

Or are you expected to stay at home unpaid to look after your children?

Bump

I’m expected to work from home and look after my 9 month old child

Doesn’t seem realistic though does it? If I can’t make it work I’ll be looking at unpaid leave or cutting my hours.

Interested to know what other employers are doing for working parents though.

I am working from home looking after a 15 month old. It’s not going well. I’ll have to take unpaid leave if I can’t work.

Me and DH are WFH looking after a 5yr old. Having to take it in turns to work and keep working into the late evening to get a full day done.

I work part time Weds-Fri and my work are letting me work Mon-Fri around my 17 month olds sleeping pattern (so when her nap and then logging on again when she goes to bed at night). They have also said they aren’t too worried about me making up the hours I’m actually contracted for as long as I’m able to complete what I have said I will.

I know I’m very lucky with what they are letting me do (especially as DH is still having to go out to work) but it’s exhausting not having any down time!

This is what I am worried about. My DH can't WFH , he's a business owner and it isn't a office type job. If he doesn't work we most certainly lose everything.

I am unable to work from home, as my employers.are from the stone age and don't even trust Google sometimes. 🙄🙄

I am due to return to work may/June time from maternity leave but without nurseries or childminders open (I would obviously like to meet them and interview them before hand too,) I am going to be stuck without pay... We can't afford that. We are barely scraping by with my maternity money (SMP) and DH can't access any help as we are in Rishi's 5% that fell through the net.

We have been in the same dilemma, both classed as key workers (trucker and agriculture)

As of Monday one of us has to be at home to care for our 18month old.

Husband work is being inflexible.
I was intending of working 3day each to try and keep our jobs.

I went to work Yesterday and had a chat with my boss who was very understanding. He is furloughed me.

Watch Martin Lewis, he gives good advice re childcare and furlough. I think a good employer wouldn't want to see you suffer financially when they have the payment option available.

I was dreading having the conversation tbh

Thank you all for your replies. I naively thought that you would get 80% if you couldn't work from home and had no choice but to look after your children due to government closing schools. My employer apparently sent everyone home on furlough on Tuesday though. So I don't know if they may furlough me on my return? If so, will it be on my previous salary or my SMP?

If work has dropped considerably they may be able to. We rely heavily on the education and hospitality sector in our work.

I do think it's mad that employers expect the same amount of work to be done when you are looking after a baby or trying to homeschool children. Hats off to you all for doing it.

I thought the government bail out plan was really great, now I am beginning to see the cracks.

@katloudew that's good your employer has furloughed you. I will watch some of Martin Lewis now. Thank you.

Have you used all your accrued annual leave? Just a thought, as if you've been off for 9 months to a year, you'll have accrued leave?

I was furloughed but business was dropping off anyway due to coronavirus so there was no work for me. My boss has since closed the factory for now.

Have a chat with your employer, it might be worth asking to be furloughed.

I’m at home (dh has his own business so still working, not from home, as long as money can be made).

My employer has said to do the best we can but there is no expectation we’ll work anywhere as much as we normally would. We get full pay no matter what. I work for a big wealthy institution that will not suffer much in the long run and is very pro flexible working with lots of support for parents and carers.

I’ve been furloughed. Which to be honest is a relief as caring for / home schooling my 5 year old was challenging whilst trying to WFH full time.

I have some holiday accrued but selfishly wouldn't want to use all of it in one go as employer has agreed I can bring it forward. I planned to use one day a week for 20 weeks to save on childcare costs.

Understand though that now I may need to take it all.

The stress of all of this is making me feel so sick !!

In a similar boat. I am on maternity leave but yesterday my whole team were furloughed. I'm not due back till July so it's unclear how this affects me. I was planning on taking the 12 months so am currently about to enter into the unpaid part of mat leave. However I was relying on KIT days to help us through the next few months which I now can't do. My husband has just taken a 20% pay cut so I was going to enquire about going back earlier than July (WFH) but now I can't because the team are furloughed. My boss yesterday said that he would try and get me furloughed now which would mean "returning to work" but obviously I wouldn't be as it would be instant furlough. Would this be an option for you?

My baby is only 6 and a half months old, I wouldn't want to return any earlier than June. I run the risk if I get furloughed now, my employer calling everyone back in 3 weeks and expecting me to return to work.
With no childcare, I do believe he will ask me to take all of my AL. and then go unpaid.

Is your employer paying you 80% of your salary or what you had SMP?

I think I will just hold off for 4 weeks and see where the land lies after that.

Yeah, probably not worth the risk then while your baby is so young. I might end up back at work earlier than planned but I think I would have had to anyway given our current situation. I don't know about the pay yet, only had a first initial discussion yesterday but I don't see why it would be SMP, surely that's a separate thing and it would be your usual pay? In a normal world I would need to give 8 weeks notice to come back from Mat Leave so I'm not even sure if this is possible yet.

If your team have been furloughed I would assume you will be on your return too if this is ongoing. If not, hopefully childcare options will be available again.

Thank you so much for all of your advice. You certainly have eased my anxiety v