Need to pack it all in and stay at home

[malinki]

Hi I am in a bit of a dilema. My daughter starts school in Sept this year. We live in West Yorkshire, my DH family live in South Yorkshire and my family live on the East coast. A coupl of months ago, I asked if I could reduce my hours to compensate the dropping off and collection of my daughter, the appeals book has since been handed to me even though no-one has formally told me that I haven't got the hours I need. My DH has told me to hand my notice in on July 26th this year as we are also having sub-fertility treatment for babt #2. The ideal solution would be to work from home, my current role is a pa/administrator, anyone got any ideas.

Hi Malinki, did you apply in writing? I think you should write to your employers asking for their response to your application to work reduced hours. If you didn't apply in writing then put in a written application now asking to work flexibly to fit in around drop off and pick up times and give a list of options you could work with (e.g. reduced hours and/or working from home; reduced hours for a few weeks until your daughter is settled in and you can make friends with other parents to share the school run with etc). Put everything in writing - if you have a conversation about the flexible working with management, confirm what was said and agreed in writing and and for very trivial things, keep a diary note of what was said by whom etc..

If they don't deal with your application, they may face having to pay you two weeks pay and you could possibly make a constructive unfair dismissal claim and/or a sex discriminination claim.

I really don't think you should resign just yet, think about the other options first.

HTH

I agree with sis. Look into that first- unless you are very fed up with it all.

What to do from home depends on how much you need to earn really. There are options out there.

Some people offer kind of mobile pa/admin type work to small businesses- have a search on google and you may find some. It would mean setting up your own business but would be quite cheap to do I would imagine. I do a bit of Cv writing on the side. Could you do something like that? Set up properly it can be quite profitable (although time consuming).

Do you have any other interests you could tap into? I did a bit of ebay trading for a while. It was time consuming, but flexible. Intend to do some more soon. It doesn't necessarily pay much though- of course there are success stories.

I now work from home in something totally different. I don't really think it would be right to talk about it on here, but if you ever want to find out more feel free to contact me via mumsnet.

I looked on google search at Citazens advice about reduced hours for working parents and followed their advice. I wrote a letter to my boss advising him of my concerns when my daughter starts school. The fact basically is that my nearest time out/out of school club is miles away (about 8 miles), we have no parents in the neighbourhood, so I wanted to work from 09.00 hrs to 15.00 hrs daily (I currently work 08.30 hrs to 16.30 hrs daily), but they haven't even entertained the idea, I should have been pregnant now, but things never go the way you plan, my treatment for fertility didn't work last months and hasn't this month. Another lady I work with is in the same boat, but she is pregnant, she asked for her part time hours to change, she currently works 1.00pm to 5.15pm and want to work from 10.00 am to 3.00 pm and she applied about 2 days after me, she hasn't heard anything back yet, at least they gave me the appeals booklet. So I'm in no mans land at the moment. DH says I don't need to work (I've worked all my life, even got bored with maternity leave). I can't do just nothing, it would drive me mad. I have thought about volunteering at a local school, get my foot in the door for a part-time job in a school doing admin etc. Watch this space

Malinki, maybe write again and ask what their response is to your original application (and copy in your original application) - at least you will know that you have done all you can rather than sit in frustration waiting for them to get back to you.