What's your childcare contingecy?

[MotherGirth]

Poor DD has a vicious vomiting bug. She had a virus and a chest infection and missed a whole week of school just two weeks ago. No doubt DS (and I) will catch it too. DH had it last week and had 2.5 days off sick.

The first week that DD was off we were out of childcare options by the Friday, so despite working PT I had to take the day off. DH had taken one day and my DSM stepped in on her own day off.

We don't have any other options at the moment. My DM is working PT and wiped out by cancer treatment the rest of the time ; MIL works school hours every day; FIL is recovering from a heart attack and DF works FT.

So how do you make it work? It seems to me that the only answer is for one of us not to work, or to work from home (not a possibility in my field or DH's current job). Financially absolutely out of the question.

Understanding boss, annual leave
Except now that ds is at school, we need all the annual leave we can get to cover school holidays
I worry for hours about school holidays and sickness
I work p/t, so ds can be ill on Mondays ad Fridays only!

Emergency nannies are my solution as a single parent running my own business.

I'm a teacher so can't take AL. DH gets just 20 days, several of which have to be used at Christmas. He will take as many as necessary but it will probably mean no proper break for him until Christmas.

Emergency nannies - we live in a rural area and it's difficult enough to find a standard childminder.

If my mum can't have the dc's (I'm a LP and work 3 days a week) then I take unpaid leave, I don't have anyone else. IIRC you are entitled to emergency leave to care for sick children for a couple of days. My boss is very good though, and my supervisor was a LP back in the day so I think I've struck it lucky job wise.

I am the most germ phobic person ever because I am terrified of us all getting ill.

Basically I muddle through and cross my fingers. It sucks.

We don't have anything. No parents or extended family at all nearby so we have to rely on ourselves and a good nursery. When the dc's are sick we take it in turns to take the day off (depending on who has the most significant work commitments) and then work in the evenings to make the time up. Neither of us have particularly understanding bosses. Yes, it sucks!

We both have quite understanding managers, and I can work from home if I don't need to be somewhere else (although I use this just to provide extra help - they are looked after by my parents usually if sick)

My in laws are brilliant too. The four months running up to Christmas (co-incidentally when I went full time) the children (4 and 20 months) had a series of illnesses (hand, foot and mouth, chicken pox, bad colds, D and V). It was really stressful even with all the great support we have.

No family nearby, we just have to take it turns to take annual leave/ unpaid family days as required. Luckily, the DC are pretty robust these days but when they were younger it was a nightmare.

What's the entitlement to unpaid leave for dependants? I thought it was for under 5s.

A dependant is someone who reasonably relies on you for support, so children who need looking after, or someone who you provide care for.

My DC aren't ill very often, if they are, DH and I will look to see who can take time off the easiest. It's usually me because I own my own business and can make up time in the evenings if I don't have an important meeting. If I do have an important client meeting, DH will see what he can rearrange to cover that.

We are lucky in that we both have a lot of control over our work though. Lucky because we have no family nearby or anything, and the two people locally who we'd use as babysitters both work during the day.

We have had a situation before where DH and I both had meetings, so it ended up DH going to work as normal in the morning, me driving DS1 to Stevenage mid-morning where we met DH off the train from London, drove me to my meeting 15 minutes away, they waited in the car while I had my meeting, then we swapped over and DS1 and I dropped DH at the station again so he could get back to London for his next meeting. Not ideal!

I'm allowed to take up to three unpaid family days a year (pro rata - it would be five if full time) but that I don't know if that's a legal thing or an employer perk.

Actually I've just read on gov.uk that there are no limits on time off to look after an unwell child, but your employer may want to talk to you if it's affecting your work.

When I returned to work after having DD, my contingency plan was for one of the grandmas to step in if DD came down with a bug (they are both retired)... But since then, they have both had to take on caring responsibilities for other members of the family (elderly grandparents on one side and spouse with cancer on the other side). Me and DH have to cover any sickness now which leads to "whose day will be the worst impacted by taking leave" rows. Everyone else works. It is very hard.

Govt guide to time off for parents with sick kids

I work evenings and weekends. It means that my husband and I see less of each other, I'm not always around to do homework, I see less of my DS during termtime and it can be difficult during the holidays when I may have to be up quite early despite having worked late the night before. But it has completely solved childcare dilemmas.

Neither my husband nor I gets paid sick leave, incidentally - if we don't work, we don't get paid.

Im a teacher and don't have supportive family. Husband works away. It's exactly this that makes me wonder IF I can return to work. You can't just work in the evening/at home as some posters suggest. And being off creates so many problems.

Just to clarify OP, the government website says "There are no limits on how many times you can take time off for dependants".

How much time you take on each occasion is limited by whether it classes as an emergency.

It's time off for dealing with an emergency, and reasonable time off for dealing with an emergency would usually be a day or two. After that, your child being sick wouldn't be an emergency, so the idea is that you spend a day or two making other arrangements for their care.

In practice either children don't need more than a day or two off nursery or school anyway, or both parents take a day or two each, and/or a combination of annual leave and unpaid leave reduces the impact.

There are no set specific limits on numbers of occasions you can take time off, as what is reasonable for one person wouldn't necessarily be reasonable for the next person. However if your employer thinks you are taking more time off than is necessary or reasonable, they would be within their rights to address that with you.

Most common reason for doing this would be if there are two parents around but only one ever took time off, as obviously it's not fair for the burden to only fall on one parent's employer, or if there was reason to believe the employee was making no attempt to make alternative arrangements.

My best friend and I share emergency child care as we both work part-time but different days. It isn't ideal as the other toddler quite often gets the bug from the other one but it has worked quite well.
Dh has occasionally had to take time off but usually we can work round it.
Our next-door neighbour, semi-retired lovely lady offers to step in if needed too. She is one of the reasons that I don't want to move house. Dd loves to visit next door to play with the cat and dog!

I had none.
I had to work out a way of earning money working from home, not easy in my field ( I was a scientist) so I had a huge change of direction and I am still self employed working full time at home 13 years later.

I have a friend who advertised for "emergency child care support" and found a local retired nursery teacher who was also a bit lonely. She now does 10 hours a week for them and is paid a retainer to be "available" for things. Works brilliantly for them all.

In order, and depending on what the emergency is:

1. If child sick - we both use up our employer sick child leave (which doesn't depend on the age of the child - I think we each get 3 days per sickness - one of the sicknesses fell partly on my normal day off once, so I took 1 day, DH took one day, the other day was my day off and then thankfully he was better - similar on other occasions - when DS was blue lighted into A&E at midnight on a Sunday we both took Monday off funnily enough. Once I had an important meeting in the PM so DH came home at lunchtime.
   But we only have one DC at the moment and he has been in hospital twice but back at nursery at the latest a week later. So if we had chicken pox and two DCs this might change!

2. If CM sick or just can't take him
   a) See if nursery has a space that day (her daughter sprang a surprise holiday on her with about 2 weeks' notice once but thankfully it was in the school holidays too so some children were off at nursery).

b) See if regular babysitter (normally does evenings/weekends) can take him (she is often keen to earn a bit of extra cash, but does other part time work so last time she couldn't do that).

c) Panic.

d) Ask friends - last time the regular babysitter couldn't take him and neither could nursery, and the CM was off for 3 or 4 of her regular days (family emergency). Again I had a really important but not very long meeting the first of those days so I took the morning as "childcare emergency" (we're allowed 2 days for that) and a friend took him in the PM, and then another friend found a temporary CM - and I think the temporary CM will now be elevated to 2 b) above.

e) One of us uses our "childcare emergency" days.

"I had to work out a way of earning money working from home"

Yes, working around the DC, having flexibility to do school run and attend sports days etc as well as flexibility for emergencies is one of the main reasons I stopped working in traditional full time roles and set up on my own.

Sadly you can't teach school children from home.

Tutoring isn't viable in my subject. I am wondering about completely retraining but what profession can I retrain in quickly/not too expensive that is flexible?

So many careers seem to have some inbuilt flexibility.

I feel stuck.

I have negotiated flexible hours so I cam make up when they're well. I always keep a couple of days worth in hand just in case. I use breakfast and after school clubs when they're well to stock up on hours.

My DD2 was sick on the first day I was due back after maternity leave. DH was away. I had to use an agency which specialises in emergency childcare. The lady was lovely, came with zillions of references and it was a reputable company so I trusted them. I would use it again if required, but try to get the same woman as DD2 now a bit too old to be happy left with strangers.

flowery - Working from home may be great with school aged children but I can't work from home with a sick toddler (I tried a 5 minute phone call to update my assistant once and she just got DS screaming at me!), and although I can work from home when he's in nursery/CM generally it's not worth it as the nursery is on the same site as my office, 20 mins drive from home.

The CM however is nearer home so today he's there and I'm at home. But that's no different to my occasional days working from home before we had DS - it doesn't help with the sick child/sick childcarer issue.

drspouse- depends on the type of work.