oh i need a job asap!

[Emmielu]

I have never been so desperate for a paid job before. Being told voluntary wont work so you can move out & live on your own with your child is a real downer. 6 online job search engines have my CV uploaded. 2 pre-schools, 2 primary, 1 secondary & 2 childrens centers have my CV emailed to them. 3 pre-schools have my CV posted, tomorrow, i get more paper & print off my CV to hand in in person to the secondary, primary and pre-schools & childrens centers that i emailed to apply for. I honestly do not understand how i've not heard a peep yet & for 3 of the job search engines i've been on for 4 weeks now. Im starting to panic.

Schools have very little budgets and most simply cant entertain taking on new staff. If you are desperate to work you need to widen your search and take anything going.

Shops here won't take me. Even our biggest supermarket won't take me. I tried that before trying the schools cause I have qualifications for working with children. I can only work term time. Seems like no employers here want people who can only do term time. Plus I cant drive so out of my town work would depend on public transport & I wouldnt be able to start at 9am as DD is let into school. I feel useless & like I'm making pathetic excuses. I am making reasons why finding work is hard but it's based on what I'm able to do without making myself skint by using after school childcare & making sure I'm able to be there for DD.

Only wanting to work after school starts, finishing before it closes and not working the school holidays will severly limit jobs. TA's at our school work 8-4 at least. Other jobs simply cant take staff that dont want to work for a third of the year.

If you choose not to use childcare then you cant really panic about not finding a job as with such restricted criteria it will be virtually impossible. You can still be there for a child and work more than just a couple of hours a day, millions do it.

If your household income is low enough you could get childcare help from tax credits so no reason not to use childcare.

Where I used to work it was term, after school & holiday care. I covered as much of the holidays as possible & after school as they were the only times I'd get paid. Anything during 9-3 was voluntary. I was allowed to bring DD with me if the numbers were low otherwise she'd have to go to her godmother as family members & other friends work. It got to the point in the summer where DD cried cause she didnt want me to go. I did 7am-1pm or 12-6pm. All she wanted was for me to have time with her. Go on long days out. That was last year. She was 4. For me to have her sat bawling her eyes out when usually she can't wait for me to go so she can go to the zoo etc hurt a lot. I felt like I was neglecting her & for what? Money. Money that I didn't need cause I live at home but I earned just for extra cash & cause it was more than the income support I had previously. I feel like now she's in full time education I need to make the most of that by finding work while she's there.

It's not that I don't want to it's the fact that its less time with DD. I feel like a bad mum if I only get one full day a week with her. I dont want her to end up like me & my mum. I'm not close to my mum at all & I avoid her at all costs cause she wasn't there to pick me up from school or there at weekends. We used to go to friends houses apart from 1 weekend a month where both my parents had off but that was 1 Saturday at the park a month. I'm not close to her because she wasn't there. She didn't know I was pregnant till I was showing cause I couldnt hold her down for 30mins just to tell her. I don't want DD to end up like that with me.

I think you are going to extremes, using childcare doesnt mean the end of your relationship. You wont qualify for IS for much longer so will be expected to find work and support yourself and child.

Its very sad you dont like your parents as they didnt fetch you from school, surely them working to put food on the table and clothe you was a far better example for them to set you than raising you on benefits.

I was using the picking me up from school as an example among other things. I can't connect with them because I didn't have time with them. Family love & time together I think is very important.

But I do see your point very clearly. I'll admit though I am one of those parents who worries about whatever I do will be bad for my child. Never used to be but something happened last year resulting in me becoming jobless & it's knocked me ever since.

I don't think using childcare makes you a bad parent, well I jolly well hope not because I work full time and my DS goes to After School Club nearly every day and Holiday Club in the holidays. Of course I would love a term time only job and DS would love me to pick him up every day. We are very lucky that I have some flexibility in my working arrangements so I do get to go to his assemblies or plays. We have a great quality of life and spend time together every day.

I have explained to my DS that if I didn't work full time, we would have to move out of our house, we wouldn't have holidays and we couldn't afford to do many of the things we do now.

My parents never collected me from school, actually no ones parents did in those days, we made our own way home. Your relationship with your parents doesn't have to be the same as your relationship with your child and it isn't all about whether you use childcare or not.

Once you have found a job, you may be able to later reduce your hours but term time only is very limiting and will greatly reduce the kind of jobs you can go for.

You could become the childcare...you can look after your own and other peoples.

Around here you would be inundated with applications. just take s a bit of effort to become a registered childminder. You can dictate your hours, work around school drop off etc. Only do pre-schoolers/school age children or both according to preference........the paperwork is a pain but not out of your comfort zone I am sure.

id love to be a childminder....if i had my own home. unfortunately im still living at home with my parents. i dont quite think they'd be happy with me having that career in their house. Not only that, they need me here as much as possible to look after their puppy.

ooh & paperwork...is it strange for me to say i love paperwork?

Agree, your parents puppy is down to them to look after. Not working as they like you home is sheer madness.

If you want to be a childminder you could take any job whilst you register and set up and then swap over. Explaining why you need to use childcare to a child can be kept very simple.

you can mind from someone else's property, but only with their permission obviously!!

do you want to do my paperwork

actually maybe you should look into using your love of paper as a possible self employment route???not as mad as it sounds!!!!!

Have you thought about domestic cleaning? A friend and I just gave ourselves a 'company' name, put some adverts in shop windows locally and took out an advert in the local paper - cost about 72 pounds for four weeks for a small box with name contact nos etc. A friend also set up a really simple website for us.

We very quickly had loads of work. I did four hours five days a week, while ds was at childminder. We charged a tenner an hour.

Self-employed is almost the only way to go now, as a lone parent with no support so try and think of something you can do. You can claim working tax credits etc being self-employed. just make sure you keep all receipts, track of all earnings etc. I got an accountant who does it all for me at end of tax year. I know you still earn a pittance compared what to meant is to be the average national wage but hell it's so much better than being completely jobless.

Mind you I do really enjoy cleaning. HTH

You need to either move out and set up a business of your own or else use your parents for childcare in exchange for a decent amount of housekeeping and the odd puppy sitting.

Agree self employment is the best thing right now, even the companies hiring treat you like shit under their shoe because if you don't want to put up with it there's ten more who will gladly take your place.

You're not with your child when he/she is at school, so an extra hour or so being picked up by a childminder in order that you can get home( or get into) work, won't destroy your relationship.
Thousands of kids have some sort of extra childcare on top of their school-life, and it doesn't mean the parent/child relationship totally breaks down. Get a grip!

Not particularly pleasant there Nonnomum..

Agree with UnlikelyAmazonions' suggestion - its one of the things i do too.

sel-employment does sound like my only best bet right now. Cleaning would be a great start & would be handy for while im looking elsewhere or trying to set something else up. Thanks! x