Changes to Childcare Costs

Last month, I wrote a post about childcare costs, and how the government's proposed changes were less than ideal.

For once, it seems the government listened to what people were saying, and yesterday's announcement was that everyone claiming Universal Credit would be able to claim 85% of childcare costs. Previously, this figure was intended to be split, with those earning above the income tax threshold receiving 85% and those earning below the threshold receiving just 70%.

I am so relieve they have done this; it will make a big difference to people like me who are working hard to avoid relying on benefits. This will hopefully mean that less of my income will be going out the door in childcare costs (at the moment my childcare bill is around £7800 a year, and I don't expect to earn much more than that in my first year of self employment).

One thing that does concern me, and something they've cleverly left out of all their PR opportunities, is the small fact that at the moment, the only people claiming Universal Credit are a relatively tiny group of single people with no dependents. The roll-out of Universal Credit has been somewhat delayed, and there has been little word on when they expect it to complete. So at the moment their lovely new announcement is a bit... academic, isn't it!

I am, quite frankly, petrified of Universal Credit. When my maternity leave finished and I claimed Income Support, I had a first-hand experience of just how poorly organised the system is. A claim for Income Support takes "up to" seventeen working days. When I got to Day 17 and there was still no money, I called them to ask what was going on - only to be told, oh, the money is here. I've no idea why it wasn't sent; I'll send a BACS payment now. For those who don't know a BACS payment typically takes three working days - taking the total time between applying for money and receiving it twenty working days. Four working weeks. It's not surprising then, that during that time I ended up having to receive a food parcel from the Trussell Trust.

During the time I was waiting for Income Support, I was still able to struggle by for most of the time because I was still receiving Child Tax Credits and Child Benefit. It was a comfort to know that if one incompetent government agency messed up, another would probably not mess up for a while - so there was still a chance of some money, however little, making it into my bank account. If all of the payments are going through the same government agency, the same computer system, where is the provision for when they mess up? I think it's a little optimistic to assume that everything will run smoothly and it won't mess up! I've heard too many stories to suggest otherwise.

Another point about the announcement is more clearly made by the website Mothers At Home Matter. The Universal Credit website gleefully tells claimants that there is no limit to the number of hours they can work each week - but why are we encouraging parents to go to work and spend as much time as possible at work? Yes, we absolutely should be helping those parents who want to work, to make it financially viable for them to do so - but equally, those staying at home are rarely doing so in order to keep up with their Jeremy Kyle fixation. Stay at home parents spend their days reading stories, making models, building towers, explaining, teaching. Why does society put such little value on this? The parents of today are raising the society of tomorrow. If we're not spending any time together as families, I am worried about what the society of tomorrow will look like to be honest.

So yes, well done government, your idea is good in principle - but I think you probably need to put a bit more work in. Could do better!

The Childcare Issue

I was on LBC this morning talking about childcare costs; a new report has come out showing that childcare costs have rocketed by almost 80% in the last ten years and people are outraged.

Actually, the figure they quote as an average (and are clearly outraged by) is about £50 a week less than what I pay.

My daughter goes to a fantastic nursery. I know she is safe and well cared for there, and she has fun. She is happy there. I can leave her there in the morning knowing that she will play happily with her friends, learn about the world, do painting, drawing, make collages, play outside in the playground. At lunch time, the cook prepares a fabulous meal that they all eat together; S often has double helpings. If her nose runs, someone will wipe it. If she falls down, someone will pick her up and give her a cuddle. She usually comes home wearing her spare change of clothes, covered in sand and paint and glitter and food - and a great big grin. I am happy to pay what some might think is an extortionate amount on childcare because I know every penny of it is money well spent.

Let's look at the options parents have here:

1. One parent stays home and looks after the child(ren) while the other goes out to work. One income (unless it's fairly substantial) will not go terribly far and unless the stay at home parent is Mum/Dad of the Year, there is likely to be a fair bit of down time during the day while the parent does things like cleaning, washing, preparing lunch and so on. Yes, they can go out to toddler groups and meet friends at the park, but there is also likely to be a fair amount of time spent watching CBeebies (there was when I was a SAHM any way). Doing things outside of the house costs money, and if your partner is not bringing home the big bucks, you can't always afford an educational trip to the zoo or whatever.

2. Both parents work, and the child or children go to nursery or stay with a relative. It's hard enough to pay for a nursery place for one child, but if you have two nursery age children, at what point do you decide that actually, the second parent going to work is costing you money?

Childcare seems to have become this problem to solve: find someone to watch the children and make sure they don't break any bones while you go and sit at a desk doing a job you hate and resent because it's keeping you away from your child. The media, and the government, seem to have forgotten that actually, many of us don't want cheap-as-chips nursery places. If my nursery put its prices down, I would wonder what the hell they were scrimping on. I want to pay good money, knowing that my child is happy and safe and secure, and that the staff are not spending their time at work preoccupied with how they will make ends meet this month. I don't want to pay peanuts to just shove my child somewhere to keep her out of harm's way. No job is worth that.

My personal opinion is that nurseries should receive massive subsidies from the government. In the same way that schools receive funding per pupil for the academic year, nurseries should receive the same - with a token amount of top-up from the parents.

I fully respect parents who choose to stay home with their children until they're of school age. I know a lot of women who do this, and they do a fantastic job. I know that I could not do such a great job; I know that on a day-to-day basis, my daughter has more fun at nursery than she does stuck at home with me. And I am a better Mummy for the time I get to spend working and chatting to adults about things that don't involve nappies and CBeebies.

So what do we do? The other caller on the show today was a lady called Claire Paye from a campaign group called Mothers At Home Matter. She quite rightly said that funding seems to be skewed in favour of families where the parents work; families where a parent stays home to care for the children receive no funding. Incidentally, it's the same if you decide to home school your child: pack your child off to a crowded, dirty school that's more about crowd control and exams than actual enrichment of life, and that school get a set amount of funding per head. Decide to home school your child... you don't even get a free exercise book.

Claire says:

Mothers at Home Matters believes that mothers are the most important person in a child's life. However, this Government is spending £4.5bn on childcare and what it calls early intervention whilst charging families with a mother at home at least 54% more tax than families where both parents work.  So they are subsidising childcare and penalising mothercare.  Mothers at Home Matter is campaigning for a level playing field where families can make a genuine choice as to whether to look after their babies and children entirely themselves or for both parents to work to whatever extent suits the family.  The only 'choice' the Government offers families is for both parents to work, ideally for as many hours as possible, outsourcing childcare to paid, detached professionals.  

The phrase Claire used on air was a "level playing field." I think she's right to be honest. I really believe that being a parent is the most important job there is. As parents we are responsible for raising the next generation. If we do a bad job, who will pick up the pieces? If we can't afford to do enriching, educating activities with our children, if we can't afford to take them places, to feed them nice and varied foods... what happens then? What happens when that child grows up into an adult who has never seen a pineapple, or hasn't learned how to tell the time? Or something more serious?

Which brings me onto my next point.

I've written before about the change to Universal Credit, and how I'm not the biggest fan. The latest revelations have left me gobsmacked though!

With the proposed changes, families claiming what are currently known as tax credits and earning above the income tax threshold - due to rise to £10,000 this April - will be able to reclaim up to 85% of their childcare costs (at the moment it's 70%). Sounds good, right?

Except that those earning below the income tax threshold will only be able to claim up to 70% of their childcare costs. According to Gingerbread, this means families on lower incomes will effectively be paying double for their childcare. How is that in any way right?

Just sit and have a think for a moment about this. Single parents returning to work invariably end up in low-paid, menial jobs - because that's what's available to fit around everything else. Mums in general end up mostly on the checkouts at Tesco or in cleaning jobs because of a lack of flexibility in their original jobs. How many of those jobs do you think will pay more than £10,000 a year? Bearing in mind, of course, that the person in question might only be doing 18 hours a week.

I understand the idea that "if you're not paying tax, you can't claim it back" but really that puts lower income families in a really tricky position. What do they do? I claim tax credits to pay for S's nursery. If my funding suddenly dropped to 70% I'd have to find that shortfall from somewhere. I'm trying to think of where I'd find it... It would undoubtedly be the money spent on day trips, bus rides, supplies for messy play, colouring pens. Or I would have to stop work and go onto Income Support. How is forcing someone who wants to work to go back to life on benefits helping anyone?

I don't understand what they want us to do. They seem to be putting low income families in a position where they have zero chance of things getting any better. No chance of moving to a nicer area, affording a car so that they can get to a better job a little further afield. No light at the end of the tunnel. The attitude seems to be well, you had the kid; you look after it and don't come begging to us for help. Fabulous. But however you penalise my child for existing today, tomorrow, this year, next year - at some point she will grow up and become a member of society like you and I. And with more children being pushed below the poverty line, their parents not given the chance to set them a good example, what will society look like in 20, 30, 40 years?

And I know this is the point where all the people who aren't entitled to claim any form of tax relief or benefit pipe up and say "well I don't get any help; why should you?" I think the question there really should be "why shouldn't I  be entitled?" I think all families, regardless of background or income or anything else, deserve a level playing field. This is not a numbers game; it's not an experiment; it's not a joke. This is the wellbeing of our children we are talking about here. How are we to know that the cure for Cancer is not currently inside the brain of a little boy who lives on a rough council estate, already written off by the government as not being worth their effort?

Everyone deserves the chance to have the very best start in life. I believe the parent knows their child best, and therefore it's their decision what the best start will be. For some, that is going to work - and they should be able to go to work in a fulfilling job, without worrying about who is taking care of their child. For others, it's staying home and taking care of the child themselves - and these people should be given just as much help and support to do that. Because if we don't... well, who will be in charge of the pensions by the time we hit pension age?

Have You Been Good?

Following on from yesterday's post about reward charts at Christmas, I thought I'd write another in a similar vein.

S having fun making a mess. She's not being "good;" she's not being "bad;" she's just having fun.

I hate it when parents tell their children, "you can have that if you're good." or "we'll go to the park if you can behave."

What does that even mean? The idea of being "good" or "behaving" is so subjective and dependent on circumstance, isn't it?

Today it's "naughty" to run across the road, but yesterday it was fine to run around the park.

Today I'm not allowed to get excited and giggle and jump, but yesterday Mummy was tickling me and giggling with me.

Today I'm not supposed to shout, but yesterday Daddy was shouting at me.

We all seem to forget that children are born without any sense of social norms. They don't know what "being good" is, and since the definition can change daily, isn't it a bit unfair to hold them to ransom by it?

This reminds me so much of the baby "experts" trying to tell mothers that their tiny babies are somehow trying to manipulate them. Babies aren't born with any concept of control, manipulation, good or bad. They're just born.

I remember when I was a child, one of my mum's friends came over for lunch. We all loved her and were really looking forward to seeing her. We had a great time with her. After she'd left, my mum told us off, saying it had been "like a monkey's tea party." I had no clue what she was talking about; we'd just had fun with Jennie, same as we always had. If she'd said to us "please don't jump on Jennie while she is trying to eat her sandwich" or something, we might have stood a chance.

Having spent time with children whose boundaries were never set in stone, and often changed by the hour, I know that this sort of thing does not make for contented, secure childhood. 

It's ok to do this now, because my parent is too tired to pay attention, but yesterday I was told not to do it, and tomorrow I'll be hit for doing it... but I'm doing exactly the same thing.

I avoid saying "good girl" to S at all. I know other people say it, and they say it at nursery, but I never say it. I say "wow you did really well at that!" or if she comes to me to put her coat on I say "thank you!" If she eats all her tea I say "wow you must have been hungry today!" I say "thank you" in place of "good girl" in most instances - which may be why she says "da-doo" so much now.

I don't want her to think her being "good" is dependent on some random, changeable set of unspecified rules. She's "good" if she gives me a kiss, "good" if she puts her shoes on, "good" if she gets into her pyjamas without a fight?

So instead of saying "we'll go to the park if you're good" or "if you can behave, you can have a sweet" how about "if we can get all the way around town without you running away from me, we will go to the park" or "if you sit still on the bus home we will have sweets?"

And yes, I'm fully aware that this is all largely academic to me now, while I'm blessed with an angel of a 19 month old who can't answer back yet; but I'm determined that my attitude will remain the same, even on the most testing of walks to nursery.

Another Low Patch

I'm finding this single parent malarkey a bit tough at the moment. I think I got through Christmas by telling myself  "it will all be over soon and then you can have a rest" - which was great, and it worked, but now Christmas is over with and I can't have a rest because I am still a single mother, and if anything S is becoming more demanding. She's going through a very clingy stage so that I find I'm carrying her from room to room with me when I go to load the washing machine, or to sort clean clothes, or to the toilet. And she's no longer content to just sit and play with her toys; she wants to stand up and practise walking, for which she needs a willing pair of hands, and someone with knees of steel to walk back and forth across the rug with all day.

By now, I consider myself to be an old hand at the physical exhaustion. She's had a cold and has been generally unsettled, so her sleeping at night hasn't been fantastic; after the first couple of hellish, tearful days, you adjust and it becomes normal again. It's the mental exhaustion that's getting to me, and the realisation that  apart from her sporadic naps, I've had no time alone for a very long time.

Don't get me wrong; I love S with all my heart, and on the rare occasion I do leave her with someone, I miss her like mad and call a thousand times to check she is ok. But right now I would give my right arm for a bit of peace and quiet and a couple of hours to just chill out without having to worry about S waking up. I know my mood is affecting her at the moment, and probably then contributing to her not settling down or being able to sit and play on her own for more than a couple of minutes. She's also experiencing fairly bad separation anxiety, so that even if she is playing with someone else on the floor, she still needs to be able to see me at all times. It's quite tiring.

A while back, a friend told me that I could get Tax Credits to contribute towards child care for one day a week, even if I had not yet gone back to work. At the time I didn't think much of it, but lately I've been thinking about it. And thinking about actually going back to work. This week I've actually spoken to a few nurseries, and made appointments to look around. I'm thinking I might put S into nursery one morning a week in order to give myself a bit of space to do fun stuff like OU coursework and housework. The idea is that if I then decide I am going back to work, I can gradually increase the hours at nursery so that it's not a massive culture shock for S.

Part of me feels like I'm failing at motherhood by considering using a nursery when I'm not even working. And I feel so horribly guilty for wanting to be away from her for a little while. But I've had a really stressful time lately, and I've not had a huge amount of help or support. People have said they will help, and then just didn't; which is actually worse than nobody offering in the first place. Once someone has said to you "I'll do this for/with you" you relax a little and concentrate on that light in the distance. When the help doesn't materialise you feel worse than you did before, when you knew you just had to get on and do it on your own. So if I am doing it on my own, I know I need to get some proper rest and some proper time on my own, before I go mad. My temper and tolerance are getting shorter and shorter lately, and I find that if S doesn't look like she's settling down to sleep in the evenings I get really uptight and fed up - which probably just makes her less likely to settle. 

So here I am, admitting defeat. I wish I could say it feels good, but it doesn't.

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The Work Debate

I'm still trying to decide whether to go back to work, and to make all the mini decisions that go with the larger one.

Last week I finally bit the bullet and made some calls to some government departments. After a morning listening to Vivaldi, I'm fairly sure that all benefits are paid from the phone charges. If they're not, they should be. We'd all be rich.

If I go back to work:

Artist's impression of me at work

• My pay will stop in January, but they will hold my job open until May.
• I will need to find childcare for S. If I use a childminder, this is around £100 a week. Despite several phone calls and messages, I've not been able to get a response from the nursery closest to me as to what their costs would be
• Regarding payment for childcare, there are two options. My employers are part of the childcare vouchers scheme, which is a salary sacrifice set-up. I can opt to have a maximum of £243 per month taken from my pay (before tax and NI) to be paid to my childcare provider. Or I can have my Working Tax Credits help with childcare costs. They will pay "up to" 70% of the cost of my childcare. But if I do the childcare vouchers thing, I can't get Tax Credits for my childcare. Unless my childcare is more than £243 per month, in which case I can apply for Tax Credits to pay "up to" 70% of the difference. It's almost as if they're trying to trick you into being out of pocket.
• My employers are obliged to provide me with a place I can express breast milk for S while at work, but only until she is a year old - so April. After that I suppose everyone thinks she should be fully weaned, and to hell with whether she actually is or not.
• As far as I can tell, I will be earning just enough that I won't qualify for Housing Benefit, or Council Tax Benefit. 
• I would qualify for free prescriptions, eye tests, dentist, etc.
• From a pre-tax pay of around £200 a week I will have to pay £85 rent, £25 council tax, childcare, gas, electricity, food, water... I'm no mathlete, but I can't see how that adds up. Little bit worried. It's difficult to get any sort of prediction as to what my Tax Credits would be.

This is what staying home entails

If I don't go back to work:

• Income Support is £71 a week.
• I would get Child Tax Credits, but (obviously) not Working Tax Credits.
• I would qualify for Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit
• I think I would get some sort of vouchers for fruit and milk.
• I can stay on Income Support until S is 5, if I so wish. The thought of five years of daytime telly is a bit horrid though.

One thing I need to take into consideration is that I have signed up to do this OU course, and want to do a good job with it. I also want to finish as soon as possible, which means taking as many credits at a time as I can - which means having the time to study them!

I spoke to the Income Support people a few times last week, and discovered that between February and May, while I am technically employed but receiving no pay, I can claim benefits as if I were not employed. 

For the moment my plan is to do just that. From February to May I will claim Income Support, and see if I can live reasonably on benefits and not go mental. By that point I will have been off work more than a year so I may well find I really need to go back to work. My bank balance may agree with me.

So what I've basically decided to do is to postpone making a decision for a few more months. Good work, Vicky.

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Hooray for Home Start!

Tomorrow is Wednesday, which means my Home Start lady is coming round. As I sit here on a Tuesday evening, I’m surprised to find that I’m really looking forward to her visit.

You know when you have a week off work, and you get to Thursday and suddenly think, oh bugger, I have fewer days off in front of me than behind, my week off is almost over, I’d better Do Something? I’ve had that feeling periodically since having S: the feeling that I’m wasting my spare time, and it will be at an end soon and I should be doing more, appreciating it more. Of course, I know that eventually I will go back to work, S will go back to school, we will have less time together, and this time will seem like a far-off utopia of days gone by – but I tend to get a more urgent feeling, akin to the sort you’d get if you were going back to work after the weekend. Just lately, it has occurred to me that this is it: this is how my life just is now, and it’s not going to change any time soon. We have very little to fill our days with, and often spend large chunks of time wandering aimlessly around Sainsbury’s. I’m not going back to real life on Monday; this is real life.

This last couple of weeks has been really tough. I’ve realised just how much I need S to sleep well, even if that’s just so that I can have an hour watching TV or doing housework without having to try and simultaneously entertain her. It’s physically and mentally exhausting for her to be awake constantly, especially when her lack of sleep means she is usually grumpy as well. I’ve been doing this on my own for six months now, without a day off or more than an hour to myself here and there. On the one hand, there have been several times lately when I’ve been desperate for someone – anyone – to take S off my hands for a couple of hours so that I could have a break. On the other hand, the minute she is away from me, I miss her terribly, and feel horribly guilty for being apart from her.

There’s an episode of How I Met Your Mother where a little girl brings Lilly a picture of a rainbow several times, and each time she says “oh wow, what a beautiful rainbow!” and then, the last time she brings one up Lilly loses her cool and says “seriously, are you kidding me? Another rainbow? Aren’t you sick of them?” This is what I feel like sometimes. S cries or gets grouchy over something, and most of the time I’ll go to her and calm her and chat baby talk at her and play with her toys or cuddle her or do whatever it takes, for however long it takes, until she’s ok… and then there’ll be an evening where I’ve been up and down the stairs to her five times, and I’m starving and about to bite into what is now a barely lukewarm dinner, and she cries… and the words I utter as I trudge up the stairs are a little more along the lines of “Another rainbow?”

I was talking to a friend yesterday about having a night out. The difference between us is that she is married, so if she goes out her kids are with their dad: they love him, they feel safe with him. She knows they will be looked after and she has nothing to worry about, and that they probably won’t notice much of difference than if she were there. For me, if I wanted a night out I would have to consider leaving S with someone largely unfamiliar. She has aunties and uncles, and I have several amazing friends, all of whom I know would do a good job of looking after her, but she only knows any of them as someone who’s danced around the living room with her for a couple of hours here and there. There’s nobody completely constant in her life with whom I could leave her and know she wouldn’t be upset by the disruption. And, of course, there is still the massive guilt at leaving here anywhere, with anyone – as if I don’t want her around.

I was toying with the idea of going to the health visitor to see if she would look into getting me some funding for a nursery place a couple of mornings a week, just to allow me a bit of a break and some breathing space from time to time. But this is largely unrealistic, since S is still mostly breastfed and won’t take a bottle (even if I could work the ridiculous pump I have enough to get a bottle full of milk for her). And I know that I would probably spend the entire time she was in a nursery, sitting at home pining for her and feeling guilty that I’d left her.

Wednesdays are my salvation at the moment. D only spends a couple of hours here, but during that time she will largely take over looking after S. She bounces her on her knee, plays on her play mat with her, pulls faces, sings songs and sometimes spends half an hour rocking her back and forth until she falls asleep. I do things like catch up on phone calls to the electricity company or sorting through paperwork. We have a cup of coffee together and I tell her about my week, and we chat about whatever comes up. She’s like a therapist and a babysitter in one! Plus, she always brings milk for coffee, and usually cake or biscuits too.

To Work or Not To Work?

I’ve been thinking about going back to work.

I’m entitled to stay off work until May, but they will stop paying me at the end of Janaury – so technically, I need to make my decision and either go back in February, or resign.

I like my job. The people are nice, it’s a friendly company, and being yelled at on the phone occasionally is more than made up for by the large amount of sweets and cakes usually available. I’m fairly sure they would allow me to cut my hours, change what days I work, whatever, in order to facilitate my return to work. It’s a big company with a lot of mothers already working there and my boss is something of a legend (I can say that because he doesn’t do reading or the internet, so he’ll never know I said it). Whether I like the job is not the issue, though.

I have so many friends who have had babies and had to go back to work before they felt ready. I’m sure lots of them would have liked to quit their job and stay home to look after their child for longer, but they couldn’t afford to do that. In fact, I think that’s most of my friends.

This is where being a single mother actually has advantages. If I stay off work, I will receive Housing Benefit and Income Support, and probably various other things that I’ve not really looked into but maybe should have by now. If I go back to work, I am led to believe that my Working Tax Credits will increase enough to more or less pay for child care, but I will be earning less money and may or may not qualify for Housing Benefit. Either way, it’s doubtful that I would be well-off. In fact, I’m likely to be decidedly skint in both scenarios. This gives me a choice most mothers don’t have: be skint at home, or be skint at work.

For most of my childhood, my mum didn’t have a job. She was there if I ever had to come home sick from school, and we spent our school holidays at home with her. As far as I was aware that was the norm. Now that I am a mother, I feel very strongly that if I decide I don’t want to go back to work until S is a little older, I should be able to make that choice. I have paid my taxes up to this point for that very reason. I believe every mother should have that choice, and the task of looking after a child or children should be seen as a job. After all, we are producing the next generation, and I’m sure everyone would rather they got the best possible start in life so as to not be a burden on the state later on. Not that I’m saying children who go to nursery or other forms of childcare will turn out to be delinquents; just that if a mother would rather look after the child herself, why shouldn’t she be able to?

I am well aware that if I opt to stay home with S for the next couple of years and live on benefits, I will be seen as one of those mothers: the leech on the state, living in a council flat and bleeding the government for all she can get. I am told I look younger than my years too (when I’m wearing make up to cover the bags under my eyes, obviously), so that doesn’t help with the prejudice. I remember last year S’s father pointing out to me how many of his neighbours had children who were around four years apart in age; inference being that they had gone and got pregnant again specifically to avoid having to go out to work. And actually, yes, a lot of the children in that area did have brothers and sisters exactly four years older and/or younger than them. I was aghast. I had no idea that people could be so cynical and calculating with something as important as creating another life. Do people really do that? Incidentally, I’m told that these days the government don’t make you come off benefits and get a job until the child is seven, so that should please a few of these women if they do in fact exist.

People do play the system, of course they do. And ultimately, it’s the mothers who are forced to go back to work earlier than they would like who pay the price for that abuse. I know there isn’t exactly spare money in the economy to fling at these things, but wouldn’t it be nice if the attitude was, Ok, go and have a baby, look after it, take your time, have enough money to live on comfortably, go back to work when you’re ready. Obviously that sort of system would have to be monitored to ensure people weren’t having a child and then leaving it with a relative while they got drunk all day and night on their benefits. I would have no problem with someone coming round to ensure I’m putting a lot of effort into bringing my daughter up well, if it meant I could have enough money to live more comfortably. As I said before, treat it like a job – because ultimately that’s what you’re doing, and you do it for longer than 8 hours a day.