Growing pains in Oxfordshire villages - Goring

[CookieDoughKid]

Could please someone open up a full time nursery in Goring & Streatley please? If you did, there would be a LOT of business for you.

For a thriving village with an explosion in population of babies, and schools now having to double up their class intake (yes Yr1 & y2 are sharing at Goring school)...the lack of available childcare is impossible for full time working parents like myself.

On an average week, I have 4 different childcare providers for my son just so I can work normal business hours and I can't even get full time childcare with one provider (and yes I am on waiting lists for private nurseries) even if I tried.

I know this is a rant but Oxfordshire villages like Goring and others are suffering from a real growing pains!! Is anyone else experiencing similar or am I the only one??

It's not just your village. We're North Oxon in a village. The popular private nurseries in town often only have a September intake, so you either have to hold your place and pay even if you're not going back to work until a different time of year, or put the child in before you want them to. The nurseries I didn't like have openings, but you want your child to be somewhere you like.

My son has been 3 days a week at a day nursery near us since a year old, with my SIL having him the other 2 days until her son went to school. Now those 2 days he's at the village nursery school. Luckily it opens early at 8.30 so I pay a couple of quid extra to drop him off earlier. My work (for the first time ever) is only 15 mins drive away and their full time working week is only 35 hours, so I'm able to compress my hours to do one early pick up on a Friday. The thursday, I pay one of the nursery staff to take him home to the farm, and look after him until I or my husband gets home. It's a faff, and paying 3 childcare providers is insane, but there's only 1 childminder in our village - who is permanently full, despite most of the mums in the village being SAHM, because she mainly does school pick ups.

When N starts school next year I have no idea what's going to happen. Chances are I'll be back commuting an hour each way, won't be able to do school drop off or pick ups, the school doesn't do breakfast club or after school clubs. At the moment, I'm just hoping that he'll be able to hang around at the farmhouse with his grandparents or dad before school, and that one of his 2 aunts who drive past the farm to take their kids to school will pick him up and take him on the way through and vice versa at the end of the day.

I'm also hoping that the nursery/school will realise there's enough need for school pick up and after school club - they're researching at the moment. I've got a bit of time, but the person who lives opposite thought they had their school pick ups sorted - sharing with another mother, as all 4 parents work, but they could have alternated. The other child didn't get into the same school, so with only a couple of months to go, she's frantically advertising for someone to do afterschool care for her daughter.

Hey Tusty!! I sympathise!! I'm sometimes amazed that this doesn't really get talked about in real life but I that's because where I am, most of them are stay at home mums/dads!!

Our brilliant childminder in Woodcote has spaces. And will happily work around Goring pre-school.