What about 5 hours free childcare per week from the age of 1?

Elizabeth Moody-Stuart - 25 Nov 16

You’re reading this website so I reckon you agree that you’d be hard-pressed to find a single more life-altering event than having your first child. A new being in the world – huge responsibility, unconditional love, the trials and sacrifices that go with all this – I call it the ‘relentless joy’ of parenting.

The stats

Women bear the brunt of this disruption, with working lives and careers shifting. The stats on this are chilling – as a society, apparently we both disapprove of mums who choose to return to work, and also disapprove of dads who become the main caregivers, with 31% of the population believing that mothers should stay at home, whilst 0% believe fathers should.

Last year’s reports on Shared Parental Leave showed as little as a 1% take-up by dads. Ok, the truth is more complex, since the 1% is out of all men, not just fathers. The fact that these research findings were not clarified by news sources making this distinction is telling in itself though.

So, it continues to be the woman who takes time out of work in those initial months after having a baby. The knock-on effect is longer term, with mothers being the main childcare provider in 6 out of 7 families.

When the time comes to return to work, confidence can be at an all-time low. New faces and names everywhere in the office, you’ll be missing your child, feeling guilty and there’ll be big shifts in projects and day-to-day systems or technology. The list of reasons why it’s a struggle is huge. With the pace of business and technology speeding up, this is only set to get worse, as the length of parental leave could be enough time for a paradigm shift to take place in your workplace.

What if…

And what if you don’t want to go back to the same job? What if you want to do something different? What if you just want to focus on looking after your child for the four years or so before they go off to school?

In my experience women feel enormously empowered after they’ve had a kid – you’ve grown this bunch of cells for 9 months in your womb, got it out successfully into the outside world – and now the balance of your working life has to adjust to this new prioritised responsibility.

Current free childcare plans

At present the government funds 15 hours of childcare in a local nursery the term after your child turns 3. If your demographic is deemed to be disadvantaged or vulnerable you could access this a year earlier, for your 2 year old. The government is planning to up this Early Years Free Entitlement to 30 hours per week from September 2017. This offering in itself is fraught with issues – I’ve written a blog about some of them here.
and there was a debate in parliament on 21st November about it too.

What if you didn’t need to wait until they were 2 or 3?

I’d like to see 5 hours of free childcare per week offered to every child – regardless of their family’s income, tax credits or number of parents – from the age of 1. It could help our babies explore varied attachments, experience diversity, socialise. It could give parents a half day a week for exercise, peer support, sleep or exploring/easing into a new work pattern. I know the adult:child ratios are smaller (1:3 for children under the age of 2) so it would cost the government more to properly reimburse nurseries for this ‘free’ provision – but in these days of Children Centre funding cuts it could help with health visitor contact and the mental health of the whole family.

What do you think?

As the director of Officrèche, I know well how just a few hours of childcare when your little one is very small can help your family – this vlog features some of our Officrèche parents talking about what it means to them (in fact is it made by one of them, Bethanie Lunn).

But you wouldn’t have to use that one morning or afternoon a week for work. It could be a walk, a nap, cuddling a younger sibling, researching a volunteer post, taking photographs… I reckon it could really improve the mental health of all families.

What would you use the time for?

Elizabeth Moody-Stuart

I am the co-founder and director of Officrèche - a coworking space with an onsite truly flexible nursery. We are innovating the childcare model to the fit the needs of modern families, and empowering parents with flexible working patterns and entrepreneurial projects.

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