I want to go back to work but I’m not qualified to do anything really…

[questionableunderstanding]

I have been a stay at home mum for years, I have 3 kids and the youngest is now 1. I want to go back to work soon but I didn’t have a career before kids and struggling to know where to start. I have an art degree (hind sight is wonderful, would not do that again) and did seasonal retail work previously but I was very young when I had children so I don’t have loads of experience. I want a job I can progress in. I don’t know if I would start now or in a year or more but I need to have a plan so I can make it happen! Any advice or experience would be appreciated, thank you.

I found the national careers advice service helpful in narrowing down jobs I would enjoy.

If you graduated in 2023 you might still be able to get career advice from your uni - check the Alumni benefits.

With kindness, I think your biggest challenge is going to be childcare. Do you know what options you have and how competitive it is for a space? Are you entitled to any free hours? How flexible is your DP's job or do you have family who will help?

How good are your IT skills? The other thing that stands out to me is your lack of office experience. My LA Adult Learning Service and FE colleges both offer short courses on basic office admin type skills. Worth investigating? Plus there's a list somewhere on the National Careers website linked by a PP for free basic IT courses.

There's lots of schemes to encourage women into coding if that appeals.

I don't mean to discourage you, I think it's great you're thinking about getting back into work. Good luck!

Thank you so much for all the information. I hadn’t considered a lot of these things, always so amazed which jobs I didn’t really know existed.

Trying to cover everything but I will probably miss thing.

my IT skills are fine but not great, I can use photoshop, indesign, premier pro, basic word etc but I can’t really use excel etc, I’m sure I could pick it up fast enough if I needed to.

I live in a really small almost rural city but I’m not far from a big university city and I’m not too far from London. I could commute a few days a week if it covered the train ticket etc

In terms of childcare I do think I can make it work part time now and full time in a few years. Not quite sure how it would work if the kids got unwell though.

I don’t know what I was thinking when I chose my degree, I had quite a bit of disruption in my family from 14 onwards with no real guidance and I thought I could be Damien Hirst Ha! I finished the degree because I thought I could at least go on to a graduate scheme afterwards but then I had another baby and then one of the kids got very unwell and was in and out of hospital.

My parents didn’t have careers and were always in and out of jobs/ on benefits growing up and I want to set a good example for my children as well as wanting to earn money for the family. Tbh it’s all a bit emotional for me as well as complicated logistics…

I have an art degree and also did a btec in multimedia design to gain additional skills in web design, graphic design and 3D animation.

I managed to work in communications, marketing, social media managment, copywriting and web design while also building an art practice.

Creative skills can definitely be used as transferable skills.

I was also going to suggest marketing, social media management type roles. Many of these you can do remotely. Or website building if you've got creative flair.
NHS can be good for part time admin roles.
I think if i were you I'd look to get anything just to get your foot back in the door of the jobs market and any skills you pick up along the way will contribute to your CV which has to be better than a big gap in it.

Unless you're working at your own children's school then TAs have to be at their job for the start and end of school to help see the children in and out. Which means they can't pick their own children up and they will need to go in Breakfast and After school Club. People seem to forget this when thinking about term time only jobs. The pay is shit anyway, it's shitter because it's pro-rata, and you still need to pay for wraparoundcare during term time for your own children.

Realistically extremely unlikely to progress without being a qualified teacher.