Thomas Asher, Enfield and Lee Valley Socialist Party
The health and wellbeing of your children is the number one priority for parents. If you had to put a figure on it, it would be priceless. But like everything, it costs. And costs more than ever.
January will see childcare costs go up as much as 19% for some parents. It costs us £67 a day to send our 11 month old to nursery. And I actually found myself feeling relieved when they told us it is going up by ‘only’ £1 a day.
We did the calculation in the summer that we would be slightly up on money if my partner took a temporary job as a university teacher two days a week. What we didn’t factor in was the hours of unpaid preparation done during naps, in the evenings, and at weekends.
For thousands of families, the scales are tipping. And it’s more likely to be women forced to stay home.
Every nursery drop-off is tinged with guilt, parents want to do all we can for our children and give them the best possible care. But it is also tinged with relief, the potential to catch a breath from the relentlessness of parenting, and a frenzied rush to do a good day’s work, or catch up on other jobs – to get our £67 worth.
Looking after just one of your own children can be exhausting; every nursery pick-up, I am filled with admiration for the worker who has looked after three all day for not much more than the minimum wage. And the Tories are talking up increasing the staff-to-child ratio!
My child’s keyworker, with over a decade of experience, has recently moved on. She can work better hours with better pay by delivering for Tesco. Low pay means that the experience of having looked after what she estimates as hundreds of children in our town, will now be lost.
Fortunately, the nursery has been able to keep enough staff so far. We dread joining the long list of families told they need to find new provision due to closures from rising costs and understaffing. No doubt some childcare workers aren’t paid enough to cover the cost of putting their own children in childcare. Our friend who works in the industry gets it subsidised for her child to be looked after in her own workplace. How much of her wages is going straight back to her employer?
Free, high-quality childcare at all ages would transform our lives – as our baby becomes a toddler, we might be able to afford for him to have his own bedroom or some space outside. Labour’s promises about extending provision are limited to more breakfast clubs – something which willing Labour councils could chose to implement now, but many don’t. We need a new working-class party that actually fights for what is needed.
