Your voice, your voice: “My career is on hold because of childcare problems”
Image source, Billie Graham
- Author, Shyamantha Asokan
- Role, BBC News, West Midlands
A young mother whose career was interrupted due to the high cost and lack of availability of daycare centers called on politicians to “increase funding for childcare.”
Billie Graham, 29, is a trained teacher – but she currently works in a shop on weekends so her partner can look after their two-year-old daughter.
“It’s just frustrating. I want to work, I really want to work,” Ms Graham said.
A full-time nursery place for a child under two in the UK costs an average of £15,709 a year, up 6 per cent on last year, according to a BBC analysis of research published in March by the charity Coram.
The Conservative government plans to expand state-funded childcare for working parents, with the rollout to be phased in between April 2024 and September 2025. The Labour Party has announced that it will join in this expansion.
Since April, working parents with two-year-old children have been able to benefit from 15 free hours of childcare per week. This expands the free childcare program already in place for three- and four-year-olds.
From September 2025, these parents will be able to claim 30 hours of free time for children from nine months of age until they start school.
Mrs Graham had to turn down a job at a nursery last year because the cost of childcare was too high. Now that her daughter is eligible for free care, she will attend a nursery – although she won’t be able to start until September due to a five-month waiting list.
Mrs Graham hopes that she will then be able to gradually return to work, but fears that her family will continue to have financial problems as her salary as a kindergarten teacher will be low and her free hours will only be during school terms.
“Whatever I earn on the minimum wage, most of it goes towards kindergarten fees,” says Ms Graham, whose partner works as a mortgage arrears adviser.
More than a fifth of parents (22%) eligible for the new grant for two-year-olds were still considering leaving their job or reducing their hours because they could not afford to work, according to a survey conducted in March by campaign group Pregnant Then Screwed.
Her message to political parties, Graham said, is: “Just give more funding to childcare.”
She said this would include year-round subsidies and increased payments to kindergartens for providing free places so they could provide good care and balance their books.
Ms Graham expressed her disappointment that childcare had not been mentioned in the election debates so far, as it remains a crucial issue for many families.
She added that she and her partner were “just trying to make ends meet financially” until she could go back to work properly and that they could not afford a second child.
“I always wanted two children, (but) how can I even imagine that?” she said.
The party manifestos contain several promises regarding childcare and related measures:
- The conservative said they would continue to expand free childcare until September 2025. They would also increase the income limit for eligibility for child benefit
- Work have committed to supporting the Government’s expansion of free childcare. They would also open more than 3,000 new nurseries and offer free breakfast clubs in every primary school in England.
- The Liberal Democrats said they wanted all parents to have access to flexible, affordable and fair childcare. Their manifesto also includes plans to increase maternity, paternity and parental benefits, as well as an increase in child benefit for one-year-olds.
- The Green Party announced that it would extend state childcare provision from the age of nine months to 35 hours per week, abolish the upper limit for the two-child benefit ratio and offer breakfast clubs in primary schools.
- Reform Great Britain has promised to bring forward the child benefit system for children aged 1 to 4 years to give parents more time with their children
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