Help me please!

[ShakkaKhan]

Hi. I have been at home with my little boy for 20 months now. I was working on a contract (someone's maternity cover) when I got pregnant myself and so left at the end of my contract and had my baby a month later. I thought it was brilliant at the time but am now realising it might not have been such a great idea not to have a job to go back to.

DH and I always said I'd take a couple of years off. Well I am now starting to really want to get back to work. Plus we need to move and so I need to be able to contribute financially to the mortgage decision so the time is now. However. I need a permanent position and part time. Moon on a stick, some might think, as there are practically none of these around. So I need some help brainstorming other options? I've thought of freelance but it'd be a load of work winning contracts and I'd need to provide two years of accounts to satisfy any mortgage lending so not too keen to go down that road as we need to move asap.

Previous work has been within communications departments - I've done corporate magazine editing, news and feature writing, communications project management, marketing, a bit of PR.

I'd be really up for changing profession completely, doing something like counselling, or maybe something like physiotherapy. My degree is in Humanities so I'd need to quite a bit of retraining, unless there's a line of work within that arena which doesn't take a lot of training?

If anyone has any bright ideas I would love to hear them. Also are there any free career advice services that might be worth a go?

Shameless bump

You need to look at what childcare options you would have When going back to work and how much this would cost you. I would have loved to retrain but simply could not afford to take a training salary add it would not have covered the childcare costs. You also need to look at training costs and factor that it.

Thanks mylittlemonkey that's a good point about childcare when retraining and other associated costs. I've looked around a few nurseries but we are in central london and the only places without 2yrs+ waiting lists are private nurseries and upwards of £60 a day. Which is another reason why it's going to be tricky to retrain or find another industry and start from the bottom. The last job I had before I got pregnant I was on a very decent salary, as is DH.

Aagggghhhhhh

It sounds as if you've a lot of exploration of your various options to do. You will find lots of information about different careers, as well as how to train for them on the National Careers Service website: nationalcareersservice.direct.gov.uk/Pages/Home.aspx
They also provide free face to face guidance services.

There are many agencies online where you can search for jobs, but I wondered if you've come across Timewise, who specialise in part-time jobs in the Greater London area, many of which you can do from home: www.timewisejobs.co.uk/

I actually came across time wise just this week CareersDragon! Thank you for suggesting the National Careers Service, I'm off to have a look.

There's a part time job going at mumsnet I think. Check out the we're hiring button.