Budget - Free Nursery hours 1 & 2 year olds

mailmannz

Am I the only one concerned about forcing children in to child care instead of supporting families to allow children to be raised within the home?

What next? Child care straight from the womb?? Surely it’s far better for children to be at home with their parents than being shipped off to nursery because mum and dad have to work 16 hour shifts to stay afloat!!

Spendless

mailmannz said:

Am I the only one concerned about forcing children in to child care instead of supporting families to allow children to be raised within the home?

What next? Child care straight from the womb?? Surely it’s far better for children to be at home with their parents than being shipped off to nursery because mum and dad have to work 16 hour shifts to stay afloat!!

How is it  forcing? Presumably it hasn't been made compulsory to send your child to childcare? The option exists for people to stay at home if they prefer to do so, work around the  other parents shifts if that's a possibility or find other perhaps cheap/free childcare if they have that situation (eg a Grandparent stepping in). What it does do is help towards the costs if people need/want to use it to return to work. I would have welcomed this. My wages were equivalent to the childcare bill, before even commuting costs were taken into account, No option to return to my job part-time and taking years out affected my job prospects - a situation that exists to this day and both my kids are adults. 

mailmannz

Spendless, we live in a society where mum and dad HAVE to work to support their family. How is putting children in to child care at one a good thing from age 1? Surely we should be doing everything possible to enable parents to be home with their children in the childs formative years?

Instead all thats being done is getting people out of the home and having child care outsourced because people cannot afford to stay home and in many instances parents are being forced to chose NOT to stay home because they believe, probably rightly, that they will be penalised by not being able to get back in to the work force when able to.

Spendless

mailmannz said:

Spendless, we live in a society where mum and dad HAVE to work to support their family. How is putting children in to child care at one a good thing from age 1? Surely we should be doing everything possible to enable parents to be home with their children in the childs formative years?

Instead all thats being done is getting people out of the home and having child care outsourced because people cannot afford to stay home and in many instances parents are being forced to chose NOT to stay home because they believe, probably rightly, that they will be penalised by not being able to get back in to the work force when able to.

That has been the case for many years, that in some households they need 2 incomes. I worked (though I had to take time out due to childcare costs) as did my Mum, MIL,  Grandma and G-Grandma. We all did it by a combination of waiting till kids were school age, relying on childcare from another family member or working round the other parents shifts.

What shouldn't happen, is someone wishing/needing to work and being in a position where they can't afford the childcare to enable them to do this. Help with this is a good thing.  

mailmannz

Then those people should have thought through the impact of having children before they had them spendless. However that is neither here nor there for what I was trying to discuss.

This Government and prettying every other government before them haven’t lifted a finger to help families by allowing children to be raised at home by their parents. Deliberate? Probably but there we go!

3hilton

Can someone please clarify.. the 15/30 hrs per week this is for all 52 weeks right? A friend has told me she gets 15 hrs a week but only for 38 weeks a year. If the new introduction is to get people back to work, what do they do during non term time? Chancellor and everywhere I’ve read says it’s per week but no mention of term time or all year. If it is termtime only then prospective users are in for a shock.