Anyone in the public sector taken a career break to deal with home schooling etc?

[Yoyi]

As the long unwieldy title states! - Anyone in the public sector taken or considering a career break to deal with home schooling etc?

I'm in a non COVID critical role, my projects could get looked after temporarily (I wouldn't be popular though!).

Has anyone done this or considering it? It'll be tough financially but I'm still suffering the burn out from last time. If I knew schools would go back soon I could just about hang on.

I know there's special leave but the expectation would still be there that my work got done sometime

Furlough not a option.

In Scotland so school places not an option. (Need to have both parents as key workers working outwith the home to qualify).

And yes I've just switched off my work laptop for the night

Could you go part-time for a bit? With hours low enough that it wouldn't be possible for you to carry on with the projects (or they will have to accept new deadlines if they do want you to continue)?

Can you be certain to get your old job back or similar after things have calmed down?

I have a colleague who has done this but to spend more time with kids generally. Homeschooling in April was the trigger. Colleague independently wealthy and has strong skillsets. Another colleague did it for duration of last homeschooling. If you are not worried about whether you'd get your job back and can afford it, why not do it?

I’m going to use some of my parental leave allocation for a few weeks. Not easy on work but if something is going to break, I don’t want it to be me or my family.

The “do what you can” sympathetic response just leaves me broken as doing what I can means sub standard work and shitty parenting. And the work doesn’t actually go away. I’m the lower earner (though only just, so this will be financially hard) so I’ll taking the first break.

Fruggalo yes the 'do what you can' sounds familiar! It doesn't seem fair on other colleagues - who even if they don't have caring responsibilities I'm sure they have their own difficulties with all this.

I use parental leave to cover some of the holidays normally, I guess I could use more, the trouble would be that my work would just build up.

Part time is possibly an option too - would need to look into how that would work on a short term temporary basis.

Thanks all. Little comfort that others are feeling similar!

My friend has temporarily dropped to part time, she has every morning off to deal with schooling and then works afternoons. I don't know if she was just 'lucky' as she had been training a new starter who was familiar with the portfolio of work she had, and was ready to work independently on it so it wasn't a strain across the wider team. I'd maybe talk to your line manager and see what the art of the possible is?

3littkewords sorry I missed your question - yes we're fortunate that we can request career breaks, and you would come back to your area of work. There's full policies in place, which I must admit I've not read in full. I assume you would have to have your manager's approval. Minimum is 3 months, Max standard is a year which can be extended to two. If you're taking time out to care for someone then it can be up to 5 years?