Can I ask to be excused from jury service on the day??

[Campari20]

Already deferred once.

Due to start in the new year.

Want to be excused owing to caring responsibilities and lack of childcare, my first reason for deferring was I had literally just started a new job.

Is it possible I can ask on the first day if I can be excused? I'm a single parent and have no outside help.

My brother deferred and the time he went he was in the middle of bar exams and was excused indefinitely, never got called back.

Is it possible I can ask on the day??

How long have you known about this?

My dd has tried to get childcare for her dd aged 3 and been told the waiting list ranges from September 2025 -2027

you can’t just magically up childcare

What time is pick up? Cases often finish early in the afternoon. Have you looked into a childminder or after school care provider to do your pick ups? Dd had more than six months' notice of her deferral date.

It's for two weeks, not for long term childcare.

The way many people would cover it would just be the other parent taking annual leave. Or paying a babysitter or teenager.

There will always be people who really absolutely cannot source childcare - the classic Mumsnet "very rural, can't drive, no family" scenario but that's why judges have some discretion. But parents are expected to have made some reasonable efforts to find childcare

Agree, I would have been happy to help out another parent for a week or two. When I did jury service the first day we were only there for a couple of hours in the afternoon, then the next day was 9.30am to about 3pm, and then the final day we were there at 11am for an hour (case thrown out).

It's not always weeks on end.

Of course wfh matters. My organisation lets you work from home with your kids there so I can get them and carry on working for an hour or 2 when they are home.

Some of us don’t need wrap around care.

I would never use a random babysitter or a teen to look after my kids. That would never be an option.

Well, I hope you have a plan for what you would do if you were called for jury duty because a judge might not accept that

The rate paid is derisory.

You can take out insurance for jury duty and it's covered on some home insurance policies.

It's worth looking at especially if you are self employed

If you can't get out of jury duty and you have no childcare, then really you need to treat it like being in hospital or similar. Tell the judge that you've organised childcare by phoning social services to make arrangements to look after your child while you're doing jury duty and you're happy to reimburse one of their foster carers whatever paltry childcare rate the court covers.

This is one of those areas where often there is no joined-up thinking between the various government departments and it hacks me off.

Fine for older children but not KS1 or younger because you won't be fully concentrating on work.

Maybe, when it's so important that we should do our duty, then the courts should be providing suitable childcare.

When dd was small we have childcare for the days I worked. Her nursery was a busy, over subscribed one. They wouldn't have been able to just add extra days for her. And there is rarely just random childcare available to book at relatively short notice - 2 months is nothing when it comes to childcare provision.

That must save you a lot of money, but surely the other side of that is that if something comes up, you would need to pay for short notice childcare - whether that's after school club, paying a school parent, short term nanny.

It's not just jury duty, if you were admitted to hospital, you would need to work something out too.

There is no paid childcare accessible to normal families that could cover a parent being admitted to hospital unless you have family help or help from friends or the other parent could do it. Realistically social services would be stepping in at this point or (as often happens) the mother would have to go without or put off treatment.

OP didn't mention her child's age or working hours. She could finish at 3 for all you know. Maybe her child is 9 or 10, perfectly capable of amusing themselves after school but not old enough to leave alone every day after school.

Unless the 'do your duty' brigade are also single parents then you really have no fucking idea. Many people do not get paid whilst off for jury duty, or are self employed (as I was). If the government want women with sole responsibility for children to serve on their jury's then they need to recompense appropriately. Not the token pocket money they currently offer. And if child care isn't available that should be reason enough.

OP I have been excused 6 times now, last time just a few weeks ago. I am lucky my profession is on 'the list'. Good luck.

Kind of distasteful how proud you are of not doing your duty @Doseofdopamine . As a relative of a murder victim I am glad that others were willing and able to attend the trial and convict.

@OP, you will need to find childcare for day one and maybe also two to be on the safe side, and see what happens when you explain your situation. It will all become much clearer then. You’ve missed your window to apply for a general exclusion so the final decision to excuse rests with the individual judge if you are assigned to a case. I was long listed for a five week trial and then they chose 14 (12 plus 2 alternates) by ballot from the long list. Of those 14, if any had reasons not to serve they had to state their specific circumstances to the judge - in open court, I might add-everyone else could hear the discussion and the reasons the person was giving. The judge was very firm about civic duty but I do recall one woman being excused because she said she cared for her grandchildren

I was not picked out of the long list. I did think they might have moved forward more quickly if they had asked for those on the long list who had no objection to serving to raise their hands, but that’s not how it works. I was eventually discharged without being assigned to a case at all as they had their full quota, but that is literally the luck of the draw.

If you go and are not assigned to a case on day 1 you will be able to talk to the organisers about your childcare issues. they might be willing to discharge you straight away.

But it wasn't @Doseofdopamine duty to do as they are on the list of those that can't do it, even if they wanted to to it they couldn't.

And she considers herself “lucky” because of this.

@Campari20 when you deferred the first time were you asked to give 3 alternative dates that you could start on? That’s what happened when I deferred my second period of jury service about 3 years ago.

They don’t just allocate another random date.

When you did that did you not give any thought to making appropriate childcare arrangements?

This situation is of your making and you should be doing everything that you can to find a solution, not just hoping to dodge your duty.

How many people on here would REALLY send their kid home with a random local teenager for two weeks?

How many on here would REALLY happily pick up the kid of a random school mum for a fortnight for £2.50 an hour?

Honestly, some people are full of shit.

Yes I do. I have ADHD so would make a terrible juror anyway. I would miss 90% of the information as I forget almost everything I'm told as I'm too busy trying to react the correct way and make the correct facial expressions. I would genuinely find it very difficult and would likely ask to be excused on these grounds if I wasn't automatically excused.
I also have a very strong sense of justice so if you were up in court I would likely assume you were guilty anyway as I know how difficult it is to actually get a case to court.. See, not the best juror.

That was to @HotCrossBunplease

I've got adhd and I'm the same. I was called up once but deferred because i had a very young baby and no childcare.

I hope i never get called again because i would be a terrible juror.

Yes I agree. I have local childcare so no skin in the game myself, but I also know that under the age of about 5 my children wouldn't have happily gone along with strangers the way some do (and no, they wouldn't be fine after a few minutes - nursery admitted defeat with one of ours during settling in and later said he was one of only a handful of children they'd had that they couldn't settle).

Are you able to claim expenses for informal childcare? I genuinely don't know. I'd assumed it would have to be a registered provider.