Calling lone parents - how do you balance work and children and what would make life easier?

[carriemumsnet]

Hi there

We're starting to compile the results of our Home Front project we'd love some more input from lone parents.

Are you able to balance paid work and caring for your child/ren in the way you'd like to? What, if any, are the problems you've encountered? And what policies could you suggest that would make a positive difference to your life?

In case the whole Home Front experience has passed you by - here's some more info about it The plan is to come up with a list of recommendations and hopefully affect policy - so it would be really great to get as many views and thoughts as possible.

Thanks in advance

I would seriously love my school to have a breakfast and afterschool club so that I can juggle my hours more effectively.

Currently the after school clubs are very ad hoc, can be cancelled at a moments notice, and I even run one of them myself! I was once called at 3.30 to be told the club had been cancelled that week and could I come and pick up my son. Well no because I am an hour's drive away at work and only just leaving as I thought I had an extra hour I could spend at work today...

Personally I am only able to juggle work thanks to a very understanding boss who took me on with very flexible working conditions. He understood the difficulties having been a single parent himself. I am so grateful to him for the opportunity and the flexibility which means I get to go to any school activity I want such as sports day, xmas play and the like. I also can help out with swimming and listening to readers in class.

However our school has very little understanding of the practicalities for most working parent. Sometimes we are notified of school events with less than a week's notice.

For example a letter came home from school last week detailing all the dates for this half term. This included harvest festival, PTA coffee morning, and afternoon event for sale of second hand uniform and to introduce the new school uniform. All three of these are on different day on the same week and in school time! Is it any wonder they are so short of helpers for the PTA?!

My work are ok with me adjusting my hours to fit, but many working parents can't do this, and certainly not for three days in the same week. I only work part time though. I couldn't have a full time job and maintain any kind of decent home life relationship with my son. I know I get paid less than others who do my job do, and I have to pay a significant amount of my salary to travel to work and for parking as I live in a rural area. The only alternative jobs realistically are supermarket jobs which wouldn't fit around school hours and for which I would not have any child care available to be able to work. Several mum's at school do this in the evening/night, but they have a partner to care for the children while working. I do not have any partner/parent/ex help I can regularly rely on.

I would like to see our school being more considerate of all parents whether they be single or not. Most families have at least 1 full time working parent who misses out on the vast majority of their child's school life. Decent notification of non pupil days and all school events so that they can be attended by as many parents as possible.

I find it really difficult to find a job that is school hours or term time. I don't want to send ds to a holiday club etc as I would hardly see him. I'm often so exhauseted by the weekend it does affect the time we have together.

I agree with all that Gillybean says with regard to school and working hours.

My son is nowhere near school age yet but I know that when that time comes I'm going to have to find some way of adjusting my working hours to fit around school, or finding after school/breakfast clubs for him to attend.

I work full time and my son attends a private nursery. I am very lucky that although I receive no financial support from my son's father I can afford to continue working, although it is very tight financially. I am also lucky that I work a standard working week and do not have to work shifts or nights the way some of my friends do. Here childcare becomes almost impossible without prohibitively expensive live-in help.

I second a lot of what gillybean says.

I also work part time and if I worked full time I suspect I would be utterly exhausted and stressed.

Have complete flexibility and breakfast and after school clubs. I could do with breakfast club starting earlier sometimes as 8AM is pretty late if you need to get to a meeting 30 miles away at 8.30AM (which does sometimes happen in my job. Usually I just tell them I am going to be late, but I'd like to have the option not to be).

It helps that my hours are totally flexible, apart from meetings I can do whatever days and hours I like. This week, I have worked from home yesterday and today because my DS is ill. It's no prob - I don't even have to take time off.

I'm happy with the policies the govt have atm tbh, tax credits enable me to work and pay the expenses associated with that. Am extremely worried about what Dave Cameron will do if he gets in - I suspect he will start attacking me and my children as he has deliberately not said anything about tax credits except that he will "reform" them. What he means is, abolish or reduce. Which wouldn't do a lot for my work life balance.

What would make life easier - if we could use CTC for any childcare we wanted (eg au-pairs, mother's help) not just ofsted registered. Or if oftsted registering were made easier for relatives, friends etc. to do informal bits of childminding. It is such a pita having to send the kids to after school club, they hate it. But there are no suitable childminders here, the best ones have all de-registered.

Agree with CTC suggestion made by LittleBella.

A better system in place where you can get help quickly (financial) when struggling, I was facing a decision earlier this year where for one month I could not make ends meet and my options were get a credit card or jack in my job, make myself homeless and go on benefits. The CAB could do nothing!

As to how do I balance it? Well what choice do us LPs have? I'm constantly skint and exhausted.

I agree with littlebella too, and with Gillybean with regards breakfast cl;ub and after-school club.

At the moment DS's school have no breakfast club or after school club, so it's a real juggling act trying to fit in all my work in such a limited timescale.

I have found the only way I can juggle it at the moment and make enough to live on is to be self-employed. I also have to rely on friends and relatives to help out with picking DS up if I can't make it.

another vote for quality wrap around childcare at school here.

It's not the wrap around childcare at school that's my problem tbh; it's the lack of an alternative. My kids really, really hate going there, but if I'm to be able to do my job, they have to twice a week, because I can't afford an au-pair, which ironically would cost the same as the after school club but isn't subsidised, and there are simply no suitable childminders around here.

If you try to work under 16 hours you face a double penalty - they take your wage off your income support, pound for pound, and SIMULTANEOUSLY refuse to help you pay for childcare. You end up much worse off. It's not worth it. It's 16 hours or just don't bother.

I am just about to start part time work 22 1/2 hours a week.
I will be doing different shifts each week and, will sometimes have to leave the house just after 6am, and somtimes return after 9:30pm so the usual forms of childcare won't work.

I can't afford a nanny or aupair.

Because of this, my mum is going to have my children for me. She is nearly 60 and works 28 hours a week herself. On her days off, she is going to get up at the crack of dawn and mind my kids so that I can go to work. I will not be able to pay her as I wouldn't get any help towards this as she isn't a registered childminder.

I think that people should be able to pay a family member for childcare and claim it back through tax credits etc like with childminders and nurseries.

I work full-time and my DS is at a CM. At the moment that works fine because he's only little but I have no idea what's going to happen when he's older and goes to school. I'm very worried by what I hear from so many people re wraparound care which simply isn't available at so many schools. I don't want to have to choose a school simply on the basis of whether they have an afterschool club but the reality is that is going to have to be my most important criterion.

I also am starting to feel that I can't really do the job I do at the level I'm doing it ie it's pretty much impossible to do a middle management job without a back up team. I'm caught in a Catch 22 - I don't earn enough to be able to afford a nanny but my job expects me to occasionally be able to work late or come in early. Practically it is pretty impossible to be a single parent unless you earn shedloads or you're on benefits - there is not much middle ground.

Message withdrawn

Illegallybrunette, I think you can now pay a relative, so long as that relative is prepared to jump through the hoop of a stupid ofsted inspection which costs a fortune to jump through, and is prepared to buy a whole load of naff crap which ofsted insists is somehow vital to a child's well-being.

Not many takers then, except for those who were going to be professional childminders anyway. God forbid that anyone who actually has any emotional investment in your child gets financial investment to look after him or her from the state.

oh gawd my kids just hated summer holiday club as well. Ho hum.

I feel that the benefits and taxation system is hugely complicated and inflexible, a real minefield to plough through. Explanations of how childcare vouchers, CTC, WTC etc work entail lots of ploughing through many different types of information on different internet pages or from different leaflets. It seems to be hard to find information on what exactly you might be entitled to in one place - preferably on the internet rather than having to have an "interview" with someone in the jobcentre, because sometimes you want to work through the different options for yourself rather than going through official routes first.

As a widow I am angry that childcare vouchers for example can be applied for by both parents - but as I'm on my own I get half of the help when I'm on a single income - so 4x worse off (IYSWIM) - because my husband died! Also angry that Widowed Parent's Allowance is taxable, it seems again unfair that I have no chance of any additional maintainence as many (I do understand not all) single parents will be receiving. There needs to be a distinction between parents who are truly "lone" and those who are separated but where there are two incomes or two pairs of hands actually available.

My son is only 1 so we have 3 years until school becomes an issue - but I am wondering how the hell I'm going to manage his care in school holidays, given that my own annual leave won't cover his holidays by any stretch. I'm hoping that we'll be able to use a flexible childminder rather than holiday clubs etc, which I think at age 4/5 he may be a little young to cope with. But that may be wishful thinking...

What would help? - difficult to know because it is so dependent on each person's circumstances, but perhaps we need more tailored care for certain age groups and for it to be very well organised rather than relying on parents.

I am also conscious that I am lucky enough that I don't have to go back to work, and indeed the vast majority of my income post tax will go on childcare and commuting - but I NEED to go back to work in order to keep my skills up to date. I feel that if I took more time off until my son is older I would stand no hope of getting back into the job market at a decent level of salary - different to going back in at a reduced level, which may be an option open to many (again I know not all) mothers in a two-parent, non-separated family.

Yes I think you are right Littlebella, but I personally think that you should be able to pay a family member (to mind family members only) and them not have to be registered.

My mum will care for my children in my home for 99% of the time so her home doesn't need to be registered.

agree with wheelsonthebus re child care vouchers. It's ridiculous that the payment if per adult not per child so a two pare one child family gets double the money than a single parent two child family.

Even if you accept (and I don't obviously) that there should be some kind of reward for staying married if you have children, surely the end result is meant to help support the the poorest children. Agree it should be payable to family too.

Consistent good out of hours provision at a reasonable price would be nice - in fact our loacl primary does provide that but its a struggle to get in.

Nursery provision for sensible hours to allow better part-time working eg if 12.5 hours a week funded why does it *have to be split into 5 x 2.5 hour sessions - who cares. Why not just agree a nuber of about (say 15 hours with a rate per hour agreed on a regional basis). I know it might get more complicated and nurseries may not be able to offer say 8.30 - 6.30 (like day nurseries) with more flexibility but I don;t dee why govt needs to get involved in that - they should just agree an amount of funding and leave parents and nurseries to work it out between them.

I'm in a similar situation to CapricaSix in that the arrangements I have work very well, but if one part of the plan falls out, it all collapses!

• I have my younger brother and my gran to fall back on in emergencies, but they have their own lives too so this doesn't always work, and I hate that I can't pay them anything for doing it.

• Ds dad and I have a very good friendship which means I can moan at him until he gives in persuade him to help out very occasionally.

• His parents are very helpful at having ds in the school holidays and if I go away with work.

• I'm willing to work hard for my employer and in return I get very flexible working arrangements. I work from home 2 days a week, I regularly arrive late but also work extra hours unpaid when they are needed so they get it back when it helps them, if I need to take time off I take it because my boss understands that family must come first at times. I worked extra hours in August so that I could work shorter hours in September and therefore settle ds1 into school without needing out-of-school care.

• I have lots of good out-of-school care available to me, Breakfast club and After School club are in a building on the school site and they run a holiday club in some holidays which ds1 loves. They also run grant funded care so ds2 will go there for some sessions when he's 2. I use a private nursery for ds2 who can also take ds1 in hols and having been there since he was a year old ds1 loves them as if they were family (they have many of the same members of staff even now, 4 years on).

All in all it is a huge juggling act and means I am governed by my diary, but worth it for the way working makes me feel, and the knowledge that I am doing something for us myself, however hard that may be.

I hate to think of the times that if one of those things had not been there I'd have been left 30 miles from home with no-one to look after my children.

I think I'm doing fine thanks to have a wonderful boss who has give me certain flexibility.

I have a minimum number of hours that I have to cover on Mon, Tue, Thurs and Fri(starting at (9:30), but I can work more than that if I can or want. Then Wednesday is used to balance things out: if I have worked many hours I take half a day off, if I am "owing" hours, I work as many hours I require to ensure that I complete my 30 hrs a week.

I have to pay for after school club once a week but that is because part of my work requires me to be there one afternoon a day.

I'm happy with the arrangement and it would be far easier for me if the school wasn't more than 20 miles away. (Counting the minutes for him to graduate from there to move it to a more local one)

I agree with Colditz.

I work 4 hrs a week for my £20 which is no problem.
Now have another job lined up for 9 hrs a week. DWP have almost told me not to bother cos it's only 13 hrs a week. Too much for IS and too little for WTC. Being penalised for even eanting to work is disgusting IMVHO. Would easily fit around my DD's (13 and 10) but no help wahtsoever. Lose my IS, lose my full HB, start paying council tax, lost my uniform grant anyways...yet my lone parents advisor told me not to bother as less than 16 hrs a week.

So I'm supposed to talk to the walls all damn day and just work for the 4? I'd be financially better off dossing on mumsnet all day...which sucks really.

I always thought you could keep £20 a week of your wage and your full benefits if you worked less than 16 hours?
Of course you don't get help with childcrae costs and you have to pay for transport, work clothes etc so it's probably not worth it but I still thought you could.
Is that not true?

MW - you are right. I am working for my £20 each week, but now the other 9hr a week job has come up ( still short of 16 hrs) I stand to lose everything.

Oh, but I can keep my paltry £17 a week CSA maintenance...
I'd love to balance work and kids. It'd do me the world of good, as my social worker says 'to get out and socialise'.

It just seems I'll either have to claim DLA for my alcholism, Incap ben for my depression and sit on my arse all day. Cause everyone else is doing it. So much for turning your life around huh?

MEH