The summer holidays are in full swing, bringing the annual challenge many parents face in balancing work and looking after school-age children. With children off school for about 13 weeks a year, but most employees entitled to far less annual leave, parents have told the Guardian that the sums simply do not add up. New research suggests arranging six weeks of holiday childcare can cost working parents up to £1,145 a child, while almost three-quarters of parents say the summer childcare juggle can damage their career.
We spoke to parents about the creative, and sometimes costly, ways they are making it work. In Northern Ireland, Emma Willis, 35, relies on flexible working as a stock processor for a charity and her husband’s ability to work from home to get through the summer holidays with their three children, aged 15, 13 and 10. Willis, who works part-time on minimum wage, says if her husband lost the ability to work from home she would probably have to give up her job.
I think that’s what a lot of families are doing – just doing the best they can.” While the family can manage without paid childcare, she says the children spend much of the holidays at home and she wishes they had more opportunities for activities and trips. They are stuck at home most of the summer and we don’t have the money to engage them in many extracurricular activities.” It can be harder for those with younger children who are less likely to be able to entertain themselves. Melany Rose, 39, from east London, came up with a radical plan after realising that all her parent friends were taking annual leave on the same day only to meet up in the park.
This inspired her to set up a community childcare rota with nine families. Using a shared spreadsheet, parents take turns, with at least two adults taking the children on adventures to museums, splash parks and other free or low-cost attractions. The system has eliminated the need for holiday clubs, which can cost £60 a day, and saved families thousands of pounds since they first began.
It’s the base of our friendship group now,” she says. He and his wife have a four-year-old together, while he has two other children under 12 who stay with them about 30% of the time, and his wife has a preteen who is with them about 80% of the time. To cover the six-week summer break, the couple work compressed hours and alternate their non-working days to plug gaps in childcare, using paid holiday clubs only where they feel they are most needed.
He says the biggest challenge is the constant planning. That’s normally a conversation a few months in advance.” Diane, 45, from Horsham in West Sussex, gave up her 17-year career in accounts after having children, as she realised the cost of childcare for her son, now 10, and daughter, 7, would leave them financially worse off. Instead she retrained as a school kitchen lead, allowing her to work only in term time, supplementing this with a Saturday retail job.
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