Shift work childcare, please help!

[Ella0619]

Hi all, I’m a newly qualified in a healthcare job and I have been offered a role in my trust. I planned to work in a community role once qualified for the 9-5 shifts and ease of childcare, but after looking for months I cannot find anything. This is becoming a huge worry, as being unemployed would obviously be disastrous financially.

At the moment, the job availability for newly qualified nurses is really poor - barely any vacancies, it’s incredibly difficult to find anything, so I am very fortunate to have been offered a role.

The only issue is I am a single parent, so arranging childcare for hospital shift work will be really tricky.

I have friends and family who can help out here and there, but I don’t want to become a burden asking them to help out multiple times a week.

DC’s breakfast/after school club run from 7.30am until 6pm. Am I likely to be able to find someone who can care for DC from when I need to leave home (6am ish) until I’m back in the evening (9pm ish) who can drop/collect from school clubs?

I feel gutted at the prospect of turning down a job when I have worked so hard to qualify, I really want to make it work but also feel I need to be realistic.

Thanks in advance!

Depending on the age of your child, an au-pair might be a good option.

A community role might be quite difficult to find as a newly qualified nurse. There's usually a lot of lone working, and with limited experience, you might not be the best fit for the job. Sorry!

could you do some reciprocal favours for parent friends as even at full time you’d surely only be working 3 days (12.5h?) you could do school drop off and an after school play in return for an early start drop off at theirs? I used to do that for a nursery mum who was a nurse. She’d drop her dd off in her pjs with a breakfast and clothes for the day at 6.45 for her 7.30 start.

Dd2 dis a similar role during her uni years collected from school club and looked after and put to bed some times until parents were home. 5 years on she still at times goes to visit the family.

oh and keep an eye out for community jobs as they take NQ nurses - experience can be gained on the job!

I don’t think you’ll manage without spending a fortune on childcare.

My friend is a nurse and she really struggles with childcare every time she has an early shift in the week as the school isn’t open until 8am and her partner starts at 8am elsewhere. She has asked favours off relatives and friends as well as other parents. Year 5 now and the friends mums who used to help have stopped as the kids no longer get on.

I’m a nurse and work in a nursing home because they offered fixed shifts whereas the hospital didn’t. Also the salary is more! (Single mum as well). It is really difficult with childcare with shifts. My kids dad picks them up from nursery and after school clubs on the days I’m on shift but at least having fixed shifts means you only book nursery /clubs for the days you work

Thanks for the replies, lots to consider. Im thinking about if I could put in a flexible work request, and just work two days per week - this would be doable with paying a nanny/babysitter, and I could pick up bank shifts when I have family looking after DC. But not sure if they’ll be interested if I’m doing 24h a week instead of the 37h advertised for the role. Thanks again for the input.

Frustratingly when I first applied for the course, there were loads of vacancies across the board, including in community/clinics etc for newly qualified. I discussed that with my uni at interview stage too as well as looking online at vacancies, and it all seemed very promising. The job market has just shifted massively. If I can’t make this role work perhaps I’ll have to leave working in healthcare for the time being and return when DC are older, although this would be quite dissapointing!