Term time working from home...Does such a job even exist?

[FartingAgainstThunder]

Prior to having my youngest child, I had the perfect work from home job and my employer had no issue with the children being present during my working hours so it didn't 'have' to be term time.

Sadly, My dad died two days before I was due to return to work after maternity leave and I took extended unpaid leave at this point.
By the time I was ready to return to work the company had folded and there was no job to go back to.

I've only just started to think about returning to the workplace and am wondering if anyone has any idea of a job that would allow me to work from home in term time only?

Or perhaps a business I could start that would allow me the same type of flexibility I had previously?

My background is in customer service and administration with a focus on data privacy. (Previous job was providing outsourced DPO services to various companies/charities)

Any suggestions gratefully received.

Term time jobs tend to be in schools or connected to jobs - the rest of us are needed year round. Could you work in a school?

I know people who work TTO contracts mostly from home or hybrid in the civil service and also for banks. They all worked full time in those employers initially though, they didn't go in as TTO, which I imagine is difficult to do otherwise.

Could you be a virtual PA - not necessarily TTO but you could build up a clientele of parents and then only work a few hours per week during holidays…. Full disclaimer I have no experience in this field but I am a teacher and lots of teachers have horrible home admin as they in many cases prioritise students instead of their own life admin ( me 🙋‍♀️)

Otherwise anything connected to a school but not sure it would be WFH

They are few and far between and I was really lucky to get an in house legal role that was part time term time only but by pure luck when my husband was chatting to a client about back log he had!

Virtual PA sounds the most likely option so far.

I should have mentioned, the reason I need to work from home is due to medical conditions that are severe enough to keep me occasionally housebound (I was still able to work on these days albeit from my bed rather than my desk) but not severe enough to qualify for any kind of disability benefits.

My health isn't reliable enough to guarantee I'd be well enough to get into an office/school each day.

The issue in a traditional role is who is doing the tasks that need done in the school holidays ie. the reason for the role to exist in the first place.

I was surprised when I got to you OP that the employer that was relaxed about dc had folded!

Gave a look in the public sector - often lots of data protection type roles and once in you can often get lots of flexibility.

There's maybe a business idea there.
I do know a lot of teachers that could use having another body to organise their household admin for them right enough.

@Somersetcallingme
I was surprised when I got to you OP that the employer that was relaxed about dc had folded!

I'm not sure what you mean?

Are you a single parent or do you have a partner?

I wouldn't get too hung up on term time working if you have a partner to share the holidays with - both use some annual leave, bit of holiday club, it's not that bad

I wasn't!

Sounds like working for yourself might be a good fit. You can then control
your own hours.
I don’t know the sector but I’d have thought offering a GDPR/compliance service to SMEs could be profitable? Most small companies won’t have the resources to keep on top of latest legislation so a service where you’d set up/check their systems, plus regular updates, might work?

I have a DH who works for his family business.
They close over Christmas and New year so that would be covered.
So he could use his entire annual leave of 5.5 weeks, I could use my entire annual leave and that would cover 11 weeks of school holidays certainly, But would also mean having zero annual leave together and a couple of weeks that I guess we would have to take unpaid parental leave to cover between us.

If that's what we have to do in the end, That's just the way it is.
Not ideal though.

If you have experience in charity sector that’s an easy client base straight away? Presumably if your old employers business folded then there’s no exclusivity contract so you could just go straight to some
of your old clients there and offer to continue the services they used to outsource?

Why couldn't you use some childcare?

The trouble there is that either they eventually hired their own DPO or that due to legislation changes they were no longer required to have one.
So there isn't really that work on that scale.
Consultation work on data privacy for small businesses might be an option worth looking at.

The above is why the company folded @Somersetcallingme nothing to do with me having the DC around at times.
I only worked four hours a day and only scheduled client facing tasks while they were at school.

There is none in school holidays.
No clubs, no childminders etc.
The nearest local authority provision out of term time is 45 mins drive away.
There is a private nursery that operates in school holidays but they only take children up to five years old.
I called them yesterday and they have no (potential)places until August next year.
They don't operate a waiting list either, Just advised me to email nearer the time and they'd see what they could do.

Local authority nursery starts at three years old and follows the school calendar.

I'm also guessing that it's also expensive so if you can use your hols you're not wasting money paying for childcare.

I didn't get as far as asking the cost 😁
Just told to email nearer August 2025.

Sorry but am I understanding that you want a fully remote role TTO so you can work with a child at home? It'll have to flexible as well to allow for school pick ups etc as you say there is apparently no childcare at all available.

You're looking for a purple squirrel.

The options are to take a role that means struggling on like the vast majority of working parents using childcare/support network and juggle the cost of this - or wait until your kids are older and you can have more flexibility on what you can do.

No, I want to work term time only so that I'm not working while my child is at home.

I want to work from home as my medical conditions mean that I wouldn't always be able to make it in to a physical office.

There is no school holiday childcare past the age of five and no support network as such as all my friends work and have their own children.

I hope that explains my situation as you seem rather annoyed by my post or did I interpret your post wrongly?

@FartingAgainstThunder there's a page on Facebook called 'The work from home hub-UK'
Lots of remote (and hybrid) roles posted on there.
Hope that helps

Thanks @CouldNotStayAway I saw that group mentioned on another thread so I've requested to join that (and several other similar group pages too although a lot of them seem to be MLM but worth keeping an eye on)

@FartingAgainstThunder Not annoyed in the slightest but I do think you have to be realistic in what you can expect in the market and honestly - what you're looking for just does not exist.

Customer service role for one of the ed-tech/MIS companies - have you ever worked in a school? School experience would be helpful as if you've ever used the products in your day job you'd be a shoe in. Lots of school-adjacent roles would be possible for TTO. Ofsted probably have TTO roles, exam boards etc.