How the hell are parents meant to work?

[worzelsnurzel123]

With this latest blow from schools and yet further delays, I predict employers will cease to be “ fair” and they will run out of the patience BJ vaguely muttered about hoping they’d have. So what are the options?

1. Resign from jobs? This could have massive impact on income, likely to affect women and the future of women’s’ rights and progress in the workplace, creation of mental health issues and socio economic problems
2. Will some parents be pushed in to feeling the have no choice but to leave kids home alone? Esp those who are borderline age group eg 8-12. Not ideal at all. Clearly this will impact on MH, safety, parental work performance.
3. Leave kids with grandparents who are likely to be over 70 in many cases, shielding or vulnerable. Risks of passing the virus on would lead to guilt , worry on both sides.
4. Wait for everything to fuck up work wise, scrabble for child care here there and everywhere, lose employers good will due to time off needed and eventually get dismissed for poor attendance, breach of conduct and or poor performance

This is a disgrace. An absolute disgrace

I'm not sure what to say, I'm utterly furious.

There is no innovation, no adaptation, no consideration whatsoever for working parents. Millions and millions, if not billions were thrown at the Nightingale Hospitals and the furlough scheme, why can't the same be done for schools? An attitude of ' if we can't do what we did before, we can't/won't do anything at all.'

The fact that this will disproportionately affect women, again, makes me beyond mad.

I saw on the news that only 8% of the workforce have primary aged children and require childcare.

I honestly don’t think the government care, the percentage isn’t enough for them to.

We got the guidance yesterday from our local authority. Schools will be back 2 days a week from August (we’re in Scotland), children will be doing “home learning” for the other days. It is expected that they will have a parent to supervise and assist with the home learning. LA appreciate this will be ‘difficult’ for working parents, but it’s okay because the Scottish government is going to ask employers to be ‘understanding’ and ‘flexible’.

Meanwhile we are utterly utterly exhausted. No nursery for the toddler, no school for primary-aged DC. Employers are being about as ‘understanding’ and ‘flexible’ as it is possible to be but there is only so much they can offer. ‘Flexibility’ for my job usually means that I have to keep saying “I can’t do that right now because of the children, please can I do it between 10pm and midnight?” and sometimes they say yes.

It is hellish and it is unsustainable, and it makes me want to cry that we are expected to keep trudging along like this pretty much indefinitely with no support other than “we hope employers will be flexible.”

Oh no I tell a lie. We get pointed to ParentClub for ‘advice’ on how to make this work. Advice includes “make sure you take 5 minutes for a cuppa.” Thanks!

The problem also though is we have a six week school holiday looming and all normal childcare options of clubs and grandparents have been scuppered.

The govt. Needs to allow employees the RIGHT to ask to be furloughed for childcare reasons. As the moment it is on the hands of the employers who don't give a shit.

OP, you are writing about a long-standing issue that successive governments have swept under the carpet - schools are not solely about education now, they provide child-care for millions of parents. Problem is they are still run primarily as places of education, staffed by people employed to educate, not to child-mind.
As the solution will involve investment, and hence tax payer's money, no government will grasp the nettle and deal with it, likewise social care for the elderly.
Caring is the beggar at the door of Government, who are far more interested in grandiose projects like HS2, or willy-waving on the international stage with nuclear weapons.

There are a whole bunch of Yr11’s and Yr13’s with no school/college and no hope of getting summer jobs! At age 16-18 they’d be perfectly old enough to mind younger ones and help with school work

I’m sure many would be glad of the work opportunity and experience.

Schools need to open, if Teachers wont work in them, I will !!!!

I think we're going to have to be creative and flexible with childcare. It's going to have to involve mixing households though. There will have to be childcare bubbles. There will need to be big recruitment of 'make-do nannies' (students, cleaners and other household staff etc).

I am also furious that opening pubs and shops seems to be a priority over educating our children.

The work offered by my DC's school has been woeful. Worksheets online and one phone call home.

The oak national academy has saved us but as soon as we start working again we will meed 2 more laptops. Surely there should be help with that? VAT relief if nothing else.

Being devils advocate.. the issue with everyone going back to school as normal is that the second a child, teacher or someone they live with develops symptoms or is diagnosed with Covid the WHOLE school would have to close for at least 2 weeks as we know it's possible to spread prior to symptoms being present.
By using smaller bubbles it means that only the children/teacher in that bubble are required to be off. However most schools physically lack the space or staff to have smaller bubbles in 5 days a week hence it has resulted in "blended" learning.

Its utterly shit. Specially for working parents. And I have absolutely no idea how they will manage it but I absolutely agree that the government need to step up and manage it (instead if focusing solely on Brexit and companies/sectors they are directly involved/benefit from).

But in some ways I do see the logic behind the bubbles and how this may specially in larger schools be more effective then the whole school needing to shit for 2 weeks every couple of weeks due to symptoms/diagnosed cases. But because of this something needs to be put in place to protect employees and employers.

No way would I allow a random teenager who I don't know take care of my child.

What do those of us that have grandparents to help actually do then??

Mine do school
Pick up two afternoons a week for around two hours a time and that's it.

In the holidays I drop a day a week or two some weeks and then grandparents do a day each set to cover.

Grandparents that are late 70s early 80s?

My job can not be done from home.

As the government have released no guidelines for my industry yet (which is due to open early July)nobody knows how it's going to work and even then what do I do with my dc??

Dh works sometimes 16 hour days so is gone from really early and not back till test time and later at times so can't rely on him to stagger it at all.

I'm so cross about how working parents that can't work from home are just left dangling right now

I’m sure many would be glad of the work opportunity and experience.

Quite possibly, but I don’t know any and even if I did it’s currently illegal for them to come in my house.

It would be brilliant if there was some kind of joined up thinking on this. But it just seems totally invisible.

'Quite possibly, but I don’t know any and even if I did it’s currently illegal for them to come in my house.'

That's not true. Nannies have been able to work throughout as they fall into the 'can't work from home category'. Childminders have been able to work from June 1st.

@Ifailed

OP, you are writing about a long-standing issue that successive governments have swept under the carpet - schools are not solely about education now, they provide child-care for millions of parents. Problem is they are still run primarily as places of education, staffed by people employed to educate, not to child-mind. As the solution will involve investment, and hence tax payer's money, no government will grasp the nettle and deal with it, likewise social care for the elderly. Caring is the beggar at the door of Government, who are far more interested in grandiose projects like HS2, or willy-waving on the international stage with nuclear weapons.

But what do we expect when we keep voting in a party who's primarily focus is their own economic gain? I really feel that government and MPs should not be allowed to hold a vested interest in external companies and sectors as it would be classified as a huge conflict of interest in any other job. And the reality of our Mps having a vested interest in their own companies and sectors means they largely end up ignoring the plight of the normal population who do not make up the 5% who hold the majority of the UKs wealth. I really dont know why people expect anything less from a Tort government. Traditional their purpose is to protect the interests of the 5%, which is one of the reasons Labour came about to challenge this and champion the rest of the population (although in modern times these lines have definately blurred).

Nannies have been able to work throughout as they fall into the 'can't work from home category'

Not where I live they have not. No nannies. Nannies not allowed. Childminders now allowed but there aren’t any childminders with spaces - there aren’t any here with spaces even at normal times, and there really aren’t now they are only allowed a smaller number of children.

Need to be quick! The twins next door have already been snapped up by a couple of neighbours this week. They are booked through to the beginning of September. Their older brother has been booked for three days a week for rest of June and July by another. A very entrepreneurial family - it will add to their university funds.

Where are you Golden?

There just seems to be no awareness of the issues. No acknowledgement that grandparents do alot of childcare. No acknowledgement that usually holiday clubs run throughout the summer. This needs to be higher up the agenda.

Scotland.

Yes, my sister and I are both worry this will overwhelmingly cost women their jobs, as they will be the ones with more flexibility. I am in the position of being the only one who has much time to help with work, though DH helps when he can, but luckily I have a sympathetic boss and a relatively low-stress role. Other women will not have that choice.

I tend to be in agreement with a good blog I saw recently written by a teacher who was themselves fairly sceptical of school return this month who was saying that they felt in September there was really no option but to return all kids to school and just have to face whatever the risks may be.

The problem with asking employers to be "understanding" and "flexible" is that the government(s) seem to have lost touch with the fact that most have been! Every employer had a "job to do" - they make profits, they produce services, or whatever. Not a single one of them does something pointless. And the "ask" from the government(s) is that employers basically accept that they won't make as much profit or produce as many services. For as long as it takes, which is the length of a piece of string. It's terribly nice of them to ask employers that, because we don't need profitable businesses or all these services.... Oh, hang on, we actually do need that. Those things are what makes the jobs!

I have spent nearly three months trying to manage my staff doing their jobs (because our jobs need to be done in full, regardless of pandemics) whilst also doing childcare - often both at the same time, which is still totally against our safety policies. I've been beyond flexible. But I simply cannot continue to be flexible for ever. For two reasons. The first is that I'm not getting the work done efficiently - it's taking longer, work is backing up and there will be a crunch soon. The second is because it's killing my female staff who actually do have supportive partners but it still isn't enough. That's with a motivated and hard working team, and partners who do share (none of the men on my staff have children yet).

What the government is asking of employers is too much. Perhaps they can't get the schools back, but they need to think outside the box, because employers cannot continue to pay staff to not work; and employees can't afford not to be paid.

I agree, and am in the middle of writing a letter (well, email) to my MP about it. It’s absurd that there is no plan. The impact on our children‘s education and on women in the workplace cannot be understated.

Schools need to open, if Teachers wont work in them, I will !!!!

Where on earth did you get the idea that the reason schools aren't open is that 'teachers won't work'?! Almost all teachers will go back when they are instructed to do so (except those who are shielding, I guess). The government is making the decisions about whether schools open, not the teachers.

The impact on our children‘s education and on women in the workplace cannot be understated

This 100%
We are very lucky that we can both WFH and will be until at least September however even that is becoming unsustainable. I'm a university academic and i can't teach with a 5 year old in the house.

We might have to start using grandparents.