Balancing childcare and work is driving up poverty – especially for ...

Opinion

Charity Children North East has found that the difficulties balancing childcare responsibilities alongside work can increase the risk of poverty, particularly for children who have additional needs

As the largest regional children’s charity, over the last three years Children North East has responded to the increasingly urgent need for support faced by children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities, and their families.

Everyday we support children who are neurodivergent and as a consequence face a range of struggles engaging with mainstream education, healthcare and opportunities many of us take for granted. This is unacceptable.

Behind them are devoted parents fighting for their children to have the opportunity to thrive, but many of them are living in poverty and making impossible sacrifices in order to meet the needs of their families.

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Parents have described to us how painful this experience is. “Can you imagine being a parent of a child with SEND and not being able to pay for everything they need for their care? You rely on health and social services to decide what help you can access, and housing services choose where you live,” one said.

For some of the families we have worked with, children have been unable to engage with mainstream education, but have not been offered an appropriate alternative setting. Families are frustrated their children are not getting the education they are entitled to and many feel they are being forced to home-school. This can mean the need to give up work, plunging families into poverty or deeper poverty.

Even when children are in school, families tell us they have limited options for work due to their caring responsibilities and concerns about trying to get into work are amplified by needing to then manage school holidays.

“I was a care worker before I had my son, but the hours wouldn’t work around school and where would he go during the school holidays? He has additional needs which makes it harder,” one parent said.

The school holidays issue doesn’t just affect families whose children have SEND. We’ve heard again and again from parents who say they can’t find a job that fits around their caring responsibilities, and even parents giving up work or being let go around the six-week summer break because they don’t have childcare options which are accessible, affordable and reflect the shifts they work.

Some of those affected are primary carers with a partner working full time. Many are single parents. Families dependent on benefits are often deemed capable of work, even when their caring responsibilities make taking available jobs impossible, and they are worried about sanctions.

One parent had previously worked in the science sector, but they found there were only full-time roles on offer which they could not make work around caring responsibilities.

“The only roles I found available to me were minimum wage which I was overqualified for and therefore unable to provide enough income to cover childcare costs or were during hours when childcare wasn’t available,” they said.

People we work with want the way benefits are calculated and paid to be adjusted, so it takes into account caring responsibilities and values the vital job parents are doing raising their children.

They have highlighted the discrepancy between benefits and the minimum wage, saying: “It’s a contradiction that the national living wage is backed as what’s needed to have a quality of life, but benefits are so much lower.”

Families have also told us they want the costs of the basic things they need – groceries and utility bills – to come down, and SEND parents want more support groups available, which they can get to easily, and which don’t come at a cost.

But there are also wider structural needs to be addressed for parents who do want to work.

In the last year, there has been significant political focus on working age adults who are economically inactive to get people back to work, to drive up growth and bring down the benefits bill. Parents who are not working because they are raising a family are a reasonably small part of this – around 18% – and the vast majority of parents are in paid employment.

But while the last government was willing to throw money at early years childcare, what working parents do during the school holidays appears to still be a political blind spot. According to a survey by the charity Coram, nationally there isn’t enough holiday childcare provision in relation to need, and what provision there is unaffordable for many.

The Holiday Activity and Food Programme is only available to families who qualify for free school meals – which by definition in England means they earn under £7,400 per year – the equivalent of working just 12 hours per week on minimum wage.

Part of the solution to this might be the extended schools model, using facilities that are under-used outside of term-time for affordable wrap-around care available 51 weeks of the year. We know from parents that where SEND children are well settled in a mainstream school, the loss of routine during school holidays can be a particular challenge, and being able to access activities in familiar surroundings can be hugely beneficial.

The new government has set out its commitment to tackling child poverty in order for all our children and young people to thrive. In doing this, we are calling for the national taskforce to consider the needs of families who face additional barriers to work because of complex health, disability and caring responsibilities.

We want to see families have the choice to stay at home if that is best for their family, or to work in the security of knowing there are safe, affordable childcare options available, which are inclusive of those with additional needs. And we need reform of the welfare system so that whether or not parents are in work, no child, especially with additional needs, has to grow up in poverty.

Hannah Mackay-Christie is policy officer and Leigh Elliott is chief executive of Children North East.

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