Parents struggling to find holiday childcare
With schools up and down the country breaking up this week for Easter half term, many working parents have felt the knock on effect, struggling to find adequate childcare.
According to the charity 4Children, a record number of providers are not offering childcare through the holidays, leaving many working parents struggling to rejoin the workforce.
Department for Education published research this month, revealing that for 60% of working parents, their usual childcare providers were no longer offering their services during the holiday. It has been calculated that this figure has increased by 13% since 2010, despite the government’s attempts to increase childcare. Twenty one percent of working parents with school aged children said they found arranging cover in the holidays difficult or very difficult and thirty nine percent of parents who did not use holiday childcare said they would be very likely to use it if it were available
Holiday care for children is slowly decreasing in availability, according to the latest figures since 2010, the number of registered holiday care providers in England had fallen by 6% from 7,700 to 7,200, meaning a drop in registered childcare places from 349,400 to 341,000.
George Osborne announced in last weeks budget that there may be additional funding for some secondary schools to provide extracurricular activities. Although this may support working parents of older children this will not be available for at least two more years, solving no problems for working parents right now.
Meanwhile, UK-wide figures for the same period from the Office of National Statistics indicate a consistent increase in the number of families where all adults within a household work – from 3,987,000 in 2010 to 4,230,000 in 2014. The Department for Education survey found that fifty three percent of non-working mothers would prefer to go out to work if they could get quality childcare that was reliable and affordable.
Imelda Redmond, chief executive of 4Children stated “These figures indicate an unsustainable, growing disparity between the availability and need. At best, this means parents trying to patch childcare together between annual leave, ad hoc play schemes, and asking favours from family and friends. At worst, it means families giving up work because they simply cannot access the support they need.”