It was the desire to offer my constituents a fitting Mother’s Day gift that got me talking to local mums of pre-school children about what they need in Slough. They told me that the cost of childcare in Slough is reaching crisis point for many. Findings show that at £7 per hour for an average nursery place for a two-year-old, which equates to over £1000 per month, costs are as much as 50 per cent of the median income in the constituency.
These costs are a barrier to many mothers who want to start or go back to work. 50 parents filled in a questionnaire; two thirds of them said that they cannot afford full time childcare and 58 per cent said they would work full-time if more childcare was provided. It is largely because of childcare costs that the United Kingdom’s record of maternal employment (more than 10 per cent lower than OECD leaders) is so poor. Labour’s offer of 25 free hours of childcare is a great start; mums will get a chance to take up employment.
Cost is not the only barrier to employment. We talked to 20 local mothers: many cannot find work that fits with parenting. Some previously had unpredictable working hours, with zero-hours contracts or variable shifts, for example as flight crew. They cannot go back to those roles. They need help to create a new career. We should offer childcare together with maternal training and careers advice to help them to find suitable work. This would clearly also benefit mothers who have not worked before too. I hope that Labour can give all mothers of pre-school children a right to some training with childcare. It is important that where they want it mums are offered a step up to access employment.
Thirteen per cent of two-year-olds eligible for free places in Slough are still not taking them up; if mothers got a chance to learn at the same time there might be improved take-up.
If we want mums to work, we will need to think about the offer of free childcare across the year as well as the over the week. The current Labour offer of 25 hours per week for 38 weeks per year is still short of the 47 weeks that most jobs require from their employees. This shortfall has shocking consequences. We learned that during the school holidays, when nurseries stop offering free places, use of the food banks in Slough massively increased. In the 2013 October half-term use of food banks in Slough tripled. It is the result of a nasty combination of reduced income due to time off work, an increase childcare costs because of gaps in provision and the high cost of keeping children warm and fed.
The recent Conservative announcement of ‘tax free child care’ in 2015 is too little, too late. Parents must struggle on in the current crisis for a whole academic year. Only the wealthiest families who are already paying £10,000 per year for childcare will be able to claim back the full £2,000. The average family will be able to claim just £400, based on estimates of 1.9 million families claiming under the £750m scheme. Evidence also points to the fact that demand-led funding, championed by the Conservatives, does not lead to lower costs and that high-quality provision is best ensured by supply-funded provision.
Labour’s childcare offer goes a long way to ensure mothers can return to work, and will give more support to more parents than the alternative. But the evidence from Slough suggests we can do better. In particular, mothers need to be better supported into employment through training and careers advice. Every mother should have a right to training with free childcare. That way more mothers would be able to join the workforce.
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Fiona Mactaggart is the member of parliament for Slough. She tweets @fionamacmp. Amanda Hill-Dixon is a feminist educator and social policy researcher. She tweets @AmandaHillDixon
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Instead of thinking up ways of rewarding fecundity, we should be moving heaven and earth to dissuade couples from adding to the grotesque overpopulation of this planet.
“God likes abundance”, suggestion: Drop God an email and ask whether S/He agrees with your erudite question or, If a-theistic write [on a marble slab] to Prof’ Dawkins.
Nice article, one which proves, especially on this Mothering Sunday in UK, that the mums are hard-pressed to do it ‘alone’, given the ONS stat’s on ‘absent fathers’ and lone mothers. I tried, and failed, on my own, to ‘do something about it’ back in the ’97 period with Cllr D Mc Carthy [rip] in Slough – ‘we’ came up with the brainwave to get unemployed men [who had little or no experience with kids] to help out at daycare centres in and around the Britwell Parish environs, which Hon Fiona MacTaggart may recall, fellover due to apathy and a lack of support from the men.
As there are still a lot of unemployed men around UK who are capable of assisting exe-wives/partners and women that work who need help in childcare whilst hey are at work, and given that not all men are evil paedo’s from hell, it might be an idea to save the exchequer some millions a month in care payments, by making a new Law which makes it mandatory for absent-dads who are not in employment to assist working mums and give some 20 hrs a week, or more, to their children’s welfare. Equality of the sexes should also be good for the Goose as their children never asked to come in to this earth, BUT deserve the best that life can offer them, and its inequitable and not fair to ask mum to carry the can ALL the time whilst the old man sits down at the Pub every day. playing Pool, supping lagers, and watching Sky.
Happy Mother’s Day to all the Mums — worldwide – Gratitude is as gratitude does.
It is in some ways an attractive idea, but it really couldn’t be policed. I hope that the new right for parents to share maternity leave and pay might men that men get into the habit of realising their childcare responsibility and taking on a bigger share of childcare. Are you still around in Slough? [perh[as we can try something for dads again?