Woman's Hour - Childcare in the UK: does it need an overhaul?

Episode Date: October 28, 2022

According to the OECD, the UK is the third most expensive country for childcare. An estimated 1.7 million women in England are prevented from doing more hours of work by childcare issues, while a UNICEF report this week shows that almost 1 in 5 parents on low incomes are skipping meals to pay for it. On Saturday, 12,000 mums will descend on 11 locations across the UK to demand government reform in a ‘March of the Mummies’ organised by the campaign group Pregnant then Screwed. Its founder Joeli Brearley tells us why. From tax-free childcare to the 30 free hours offer, why do we have the childcare policies that we do? Who are they supposed to target and who really benefits? We discuss with Christine Farquharson, senior research economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies and Megan Jarvie, Head of Family and Childcare at the charity Coram.The number of childcare providers in England has dropped by 4000 between March 2021 and March 2022. A survey of 2,000 early years providers in March found 30% were currently operating at a loss, while 34% said they expected to be in 12 months' time. Meanwhile a 2020 report from the Social Mobility Commission shows that one in eight nursery workers earned less than £5 an hour. To discuss the challenges facing the sector, we speak to Neil Leitch, CEO of the Early Years Alliance and Jennie Bailey, owner of a nursery in Hampshire.What are the opportunities and challenges of employing working parents? Elaine Stern is a mother of three and owner of a marketing and production agency employing 35 workers. She discusses how requests for flexible-working or a lack of accessible affordable childcare can impact on business.How can we arrive at an accessible, affordable, high quality childcare system in the UK? We ask our panel, including Jemima Olchawski CEO of the Fawcett Society, whether government proposals to deregulate the childcare sector will work, how other countries compare to the UK, and whether the sometime conflicting needs of parents, children, providers and employers can be reconciled. Presenter: Elaine Dunkley Producer: Lucy Wai Producer: Kirsty StarkeyInterviewed Guest: Joeli Brearly Interviewed Guest: Megan Jarvie Interviewed Guest: Christine Farquharson Interviewed Guest: Jennie Bailey Interviewed Guest: Neil Leitch Interviewed Guest: Elaine Stern Interviewed Guest: Jemime Olchawski

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hi, I'm Elaine Dunkley, the BBC's education correspondent, welcoming you to today's Woman's Hour podcast. And this morning on Woman's Hour, we're talking about childcare. It's one of the biggest issues parents with young children talk to me about. The government is keen to get more women back to work to grow the economy, but because of the rising cost of childcare, some women simply can't afford to return to the workplace. For some families, nursery fees are more than their mortgage.

So today we're going to do a deep dive into the issue. We'll be speaking with parents who've had to give up work. We'll also be talking about the nurseries closing due to financial pressures and the low pay and increasing responsibilities for staff. Why do we have one of the most expensive childcare systems in the developed world? And which countries could we follow to provide affordable, flexible childcare? And we'd like to hear from you.

What's the one thing that would make a difference for you? You can text the programme. The number is 84844. Text will be charged at your standard message rate on social media. We're at Women's Hour. And you can email us through our website. You can now send a WhatsApp message or a voice note using the number 03700 100 444. Data charges may apply depending on your provider. You can now, you can, so you might want to get in touch with us using Wi-Fi if you can. Terms and conditions can be found on our website.

According to the OECD, the UK is one of the top three most expensive countries for childcare. An estimated 1.7 million women in England are prevented from doing more hours of work by childcare issues. While the UNICEF report this week shows that almost one in five parents on low incomes are skipping meals to pay for it. On Saturday, 12,000 parents will descend on 11 locations across the UK to demand government reform in a march of the mummies organised by the campaign group Pregnant Then Screwed. I'm joined by its founder, Jolie Brear to discuss why. Thanks for joining us Jolie. Can you briefly explain the current childcare system for those who may not have come into contact with it? Once you've finished your maternity leave what happens? Once you finish your maternity leave you end up paying the most that

you would pay for childcare. We have different subsidy schemes in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. So you can access tax-free childcare, which is available to all children of working parents in the UK aged between 0 to 11 or 16 if your child is disabled. But you have to be earning under £100,000 a year and more than £152 a week to access it. And for every £8 you pay into the very clunky online system, the government tops it up by £2 up to a maximum of £2,000 per year. The first opportunity you have to receive free childcare, and I put free in inverted commas, is when your child is two, but you have to be accessing certain benefits such as JobSeeker's Allowance or Income Support.

And if you are, then you can receive 15 hours of free childcare for 38 weeks of the year until your child turns two, that's England only. All three and four-year-olds in England can access 15 hours of free childcare for 38 weeks of the year if both parents are working. You can top that up by an additional 15 hours so you get a total of 30 hours of free child care for 38 weeks of the year as long as

neither parent earns over £100,000 but do bear in mind that that doesn't start until the term after your child turns three and that nurseries will charge for extras such as food and nappies because they're trying to make up the shortfall in funding given to them by the government. Things are slightly better in Scotland, I'm pleased to say. So some two-year-olds can access 30 hours of free childcare in Scotland if the parent is in receipt of certain benefits. And all three and four-year-olds in Scotland are entitled to 30 hours of free childcare during term time, whether their parents are working or not. Things are slightly worse in Wales. They're less generous. So some two-year-olds can access two and a half hours of free childcare a

day during term time, but it depends on whereabouts in Wales you live. They have a similar 30 hours free scheme to what we do in England for three and four-year-olds, but it's much more complicated. So it's sort of a maximum of 20 hours a week of childcare and 10 hours a week of early education. So it depends on what your local council offers. And then in Northern Ireland, there's barely anything. There's nothing for two-year-olds and all three and four-year-olds are entitled to two and a half hours per day of funded childcare for five days a week during term time only. So a lot of numbers there and not a lot of hours and a different picture across the UK. Why are you planning this march?

We are planning this march because we want government reform on childcare, parental leave and flexible working. So there's thousands of us that are going to take to the streets because mothers are furious. We have had enough. We feel like we are being set up to fail by this government. And I mean, it's impossible for most families to survive without two incomes. Yet we've created a scenario where it's in many cases impossible for mothers to work or they're having to work much fewer hours than they want to. And by that, I mean, we have the second most expensive childcare system in the developed world. We have a parental leave scheme that is impossible to survive on for most families. It pays so little maternity benefit, 47% of the national

minimum wage, that women are pushed into debt or pushed into returning to work, while men get only two weeks of paternity leave and are not encouraged to take any longer. So it's entrenching gender inequality. And then there's little or no access to flexible working, which, you know, of course, most families need to be able to manage their unpaid and their paid responsibilities only 10 percent of jobs are advertised as part-time and the government made a manifesto pledge on this that they just haven't fulfilled so the whole structure is just not working for families it's pushing children into poverty it's pushing mothers out of work we've also been hearing from mums who've had to quit their jobs or reduce their hours because

of childcare issues. Here's Felicity's story. I was a teacher since 2016, so seven years. I had my first one, she's three now. Went back to work, there were no problems. She was in childcare. And then when I had my second child, obviously the child care costs went up a lot so I was traveling into London we lived on that out child care in London was unaffordable the child care we did have was taking my entire salary there was nothing left afterwards and so I requested flexible working so that I could leave earlier to try and reduce the hours of the child care but I could leave half an try and reduce the hours of the child care. I thought I

could leave half an hour early but from the new academic year I wouldn't be given this opportunity. One of my children was entitled to 15 hours free funding from the government with that cost us £1,950 for a month. I didn't give up my career due to the child care cost. Obviously going into teaching is not a career you take just to pay the bills it's something that I was passionate about so having to give it up and not have that part of me anymore it does feel a little bit like I've lost a bit of my identity. I've had to sign up for universal credit fill in the money that I would be getting if I was working so we're relying a lot on universal credit benefits to get through each month,

pay the rent, things like that. And it's not only affordability of childcare that's impacting mums, but accessibility. We hear from listener Charlie, who struggled to find childcare to suit her job. In 2015, I started training as a midwife. My children were then five, one and two. And my husband left and didn't come back for about six months we're now divorced and it was really difficult I was working full-time and doing a full-time degree and it's challenging in the NHS because there are no child care providers that work that early or

finish that late and I remember having a colour coordinated spreadsheet identifying which child was where they were all at different child care placements one was at nursery one was at preschool one was at school but somehow by the skin of my teeth I managed to qualify and over the last three years still a single mum I've been working in Bristol which is 80 miles away from where I live in South Dorset in Bridport and I had to leave at 5 30 in the morning and would get back at 10 o'clock with very little help from my ex-husband so I ended up paying a neighbour who would come over at 5 30 in the morning because even babysitters struggle to get up that early but it meant I was paying out about 180 a month for childcare minimum, along with fuel. And being a single mum on universal

credit, that kind of maxes out all of my income. So it's a challenge, but I love my job. Jolie, what are we hearing from mums who may be on lower incomes or receiving universal credit? Is the system working for them? No, absolutely not. The way universal credit works is you can reclaim 85% of your childcare costs, but you have to pay upfront. And of course, many nurseries need a deposit and they need you to pay a month in advance. So that can be £2,000. When you're on a low income, you just don't have £2,000. So it's locking low income families out of the childcare market and therefore locking them out of the economy.

For single parents, I mean, the OECD suggests that childcare costs in the UK are 30% of household income. So that's for two earners. Of course, that's a much larger percentage if you're a single-earner household. And so it's no wonder why we have half of children in single-parent families are living in, because if you cannot access childcare, you cannot work and therefore you have to live on benefits. So we find that often with single parents, they have this really complex patchwork of informal childcare that they use to try, be able to earn a living. And that's so incredibly stressful. As

we heard in that story, you know, colour coded charts and beg borrowing and stealing bits of childcare here and there, which puts so much pressure on single parents. And what are the challenges, Jolie, facing parents, specifically parents of children with special educational needs and disabilities? So mothers with disabled children really do have an impossible challenge. Many nurseries aren't equipped to deal with disabled children in part because it doesn't make financial sense. So some parents have to hire a nanny or another specialised professional so that they can go to work. But that comes with its own set of problems.

You become an employer, but also many nannies aren't Ofsted registered, so parents then can't access the government subsidies. There was a report done by the Papworth Trust in 2018 that found that 84% of mothers of disabled children were not working, and only 3% were working full-time. And yet it costs parents of disabled children three times as much to raise them as it does to raise non-disabled children, which again is why we have so many parents of disabled children

and disabled children living in poverty. What are your demands then, Jolie? What are the benefits of an affordable, accessible childcare system? So it would mean, of course, that more parents can work and they can work longer hours, therefore contributing to the economy. If we look at what Canada has just done, they've invested $30 billion in their childcare sector to create a system that costs no more than $10 a day.

And they've done this because they crunched the numbers and for every dollar they invested in childcare, they got between $1.50 and $2.80 back into the wider economy. This is an investment. It is not a cost. The government really needs to do something urgently. And we need huge amounts of investment to make it affordable. We would like to see it cost no more than 5% of household income. We need to make sure that when subsidies are paid, they're paid at the rate it costs for those providers to run those places.

We need to make sure childcare workers are paid properly for the really valuable job that they do, because most of them are on minimum wage, which is why we're seeing a mass exodus of childcare workers from the workforce. And we need to make sure there is enough provision for disabled children and it is all good quality so all of the options that have been put on the table by the government so far will not work they will reduce quality they will not invest in this vital infrastructure for our economy and for our future economy in terms of investing in children. Well we asked for a government minister to join us on the programme, but no one was available.

But we have got a statement. The government says, we have spent more than £20 billion over the past five years to support families with the cost of childcare. The number of earlier places available remains broadly stable, as it has since 2015, and hundreds of thousands of parents of earlier places hundreds and thousands of parents are benefiting from government support we're investing millions in

better training for staff working with preschool children and have set out plans to help providers run their businesses more flexibly now we've heard from mums and parents that the child care system is as some of our listeners have said cripplingly expensive and soul-destroying. But how did we get to this point? Why do we have the provision that we do and who is supposed to benefit? And has the provision been chipped away by the pandemic and the cost of living crisis? To discuss, I'm joined by Christine Falkerson, Senior Research Economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and Megan Jarvie, Head of Family and Child economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies and Megan Jarvie, head of family and childcare at the Childcare Charity Quorum which has been running an annual childcare survey for the past 21 years asking local authorities throughout the UK about the quality of provision of childcare.

Megan, first of all, your survey has shown that the cost of childcare has risen in the last year by how much and is this part of a general long-term trend? It is indeed. Our survey found that just a part-time nursery place costs £138 a week. That's almost £7,000 a year and that's just a part-time place for one child. So in reality families are going to be often facing bills much higher than that if they use more childcare or have more children. That's up 4% on last year and over the last decade, we've seen above inflation rises almost every year. And the support that's available is struggling to keep up with those rising costs. Jolie talked about universal credit. One of the other problems with that is the

maximum amount now that you can claim under it barely covers a part-time place and doesn't come anywhere close to the cost of a full-time child care. How much is the average cost of child care in the UK in 2022? It's £138 a week for a part-time nursery place, which is when you weigh that up against your salary, it's actually more than a lot of parents can afford. Christine, why is it so expensive? Can you explain how the funding works? It doesn't go to parents, but to nurseries or child minds. Could you just clarify that for us? Yeah, so the way the free entit the funding works? It doesn't go to parents, but to nurseries or child minds. Could you just clarify that for us? Yeah, so the way the free entitlement funding works, these are the funded childcare hours that we've been hearing about.

The government, the Department for Education, sets out a budget with a sort of hourly rate and then some additional uplifts for things like children who are particularly disadvantaged, who are entitled to the early years pupil premium, children who have disabilities, or children attending maintained nurseries. That money all gets kind of rolled into a big pot and then sent out to local authorities. Local authorities then have their own funding formulas

to pass that money on to the providers in order to pay for the funded hours that those providers are delivering. Are they receiving enough money to fund the three hours that they offer the nurseries? This is the key question. And I think you're going to hear a lot of different opinions on this panel today. Ultimately, it's quite difficult to tell. So when we look at the data that providers send in about their costs, it's a story where some really are not receiving enough money to fund those places. And some look like they do have a little bit more wiggle room in their finances. But the question then is, what are

we really paying for? Do we want a situation where providers are working as efficiently as they possibly can, really stretching every pound, really making sure that they're maximising their staff-to-child ratios? And what impact does that have on the quality of care that they're delivering? Ultimately, when we can't measure quality very well in the data that we have as government, or as regulators, it becomes very difficult to build a funding structure that both rewards providers who go the extra mile and try and deliver really high quality places, but still delivers good value for money to the taxpayer. Megan, I'll bring you in here. Regardless of cost, are there enough places? No, that's the simple answer. We find in our survey that around half of local areas say there isn't enough places for parents working full time. And those gaps are even bigger for some groups. So

particularly for disabled children, parents who don't work the typical nine to five, like your listener who works in the NHS, and for school-aged children we often think of child care as being an issue for preschoolers and nurseries and child minders and child care needs don't end when children start school and that's actually where we see some of the biggest complexities and some of the biggest shortages are there for entitlement hours reaching the parents and the children who need it most you've seen that availability and uptake of the two-year-old offers for disadvantaged children has dropped. It has a little bit and our survey again raised some concerns about this around two and five areas saw that children were less likely to take up their funded early education entitlement and this is really concerning because one of the things we

haven't really talked about is child care has a dual purpose. It's essential to enable parents to go out to work but it's also essential for children's development. The early education entitlement helps to boost children's outcomes. It gets them ready for school. But what we're seeing, and it helps to narrow that achievement gap between disadvantaged children and their peers, but what we're seeing is too many children are missing out on that opportunity. And that's a real detriment to their outcomes outcomes and that's why childcare is such a good investment because if you make it wisely it has those dual benefits. Now we touched on this previously with Jolie, are parents with children with disabilities able to access childcare?

That's where we see some of the biggest shortages and availability is for disabled children and again that's really concerning because not only are there those really shocking outcomes that Jolie talked about for parents of disabled children about being able to work, but children are also missing out on early education and missing out on all the support for their development that comes from being able to take up that childcare place. Christine, we've heard from Megan there about the patchwork provision of childcare. Why do we have this system? Why did the government start funding preschool education? The system in England is incredibly complicated. I think Jolie did a really good job of wading through a real thicket of programmes of support. I count eight different

programmes of support for parents with the cost of childcare. So there's a lot going on. But the lion's share of that, the lion's share of the funding these days goes on these free entitlement hours. And that was really brought in exactly as Megan says, as an early education policy. The idea was that we were going to give three and four year olds access to a part-time early education place that was going to help them develop some of the skills that they needed in order to move on to reception at age five and be really ready to make the most of that schooling opportunity. Then over time, we've seen the kind of dual purposes of childcare reasserting themselves in different ways. So the initial early education then turned into something with the 30-hour entitlement, which is much more about helping parents to work. And that's a policy that's very explicitly about supporting parents with working. And that's a policy that's very explicitly about supporting parents

with working. Other programmes like tax-free childcare or support for universal credit, those are reserved for parents who are in work. And so again, that's something that's a little bit closer to a labour supply intervention rather than something aimed at helping children to develop. Why is there this gap between maternity leave and first entitlement? Because for a number of parents, they're not getting any help from the moment maternity leave ends to the child's three in some cases. Yeah, and I think this is one of the strangest features of the system that we have in England. I think that essentially is a historical artefact of how these programmes were developed. We started out with the free entitlement hours at age three, at age four, because that was where some of the strongest evidence for child development benefits was. And that was kind of

led very nicely into those children moving into school. So, you know, you start out with part-time formal early education, and then you move on into full-time reception class a couple of years down the line. What's happened, though, is that we have a lot of parents who are coming to the end of their maternity leave. I think Jolie put it really well. They're facing the highest costs they're ever going to face. Childcare is much, much more expensive at the youngest ages. And really, the only game in town is universal credit if they're on particularly low incomes, or tax-free childcare if they're a little bit better off and wanting to go back to work. Tax-free childcare care has some serious problems. We estimate that only 40% of parents with a preschool-aged child have even heard of

this program. This is the group who we really want to be encouraging to take up the support that is there, and they don't even know that it's something that they should be looking into. So I think there are real questions about whether the support we do have is working as well as it could be, even aside from whether there is enough support at those ages. Well, we've heard from mothers, but what about the childcare providers? Is the current system working for them? According to Ofsted, the number of providers in England dropped by around 4,000 between March 2021 and March 2022. An Early Years Alliance survey of 2,000 early year providers in March found 30% were currently operating at a loss, while 34% said they expected to be in 12 months' time. Meanwhile, a 2020 report from the Social Mobility Commission

showed that one in eight nursery workers earned less than £5 an hour. To discuss the challenges facing the sector, I'm joined by Neil Leach, the CEO of the Early Years Alliance, and Jenny Bailey, a listener and an owner of a nursery in Hampshire. To you, Neil, first of all, at an annual conference, you described the childcare sector as in the last seven years exit a sector, as you've alluded to, Elaine, 4,000 in the last 12 months. The crisis is when you have a workforce that feels it's exhausted and undervalued by government that is leaving the sector in droves.

It's a crisis when constantly, year after year, I'm pulled in front of the Low Pay Commission to explain why we have to pay our people such low wages. It's a crisis when you can't get access to early years care and education. So I don't use that word lightly. I was at a nursery earlier on this week and it was a nursery in Salford, Kids are Awesome. What I found was staff who were incredibly dedicated educators but I also found staff who were worried about the gas, the electricity, the direct debits that fly out of the bank

account the moment they're paid. Within a few mile radius of that nursery were at least four major supermarkets offering them a better hourly rate. Why are nurseries not paying them a higher rate? I was asked this question interestingly again by the low pay commission who said why is it that people are leaving? Well the reality is simply this is that when you are at the bottom of the pile and then

you get a statistic where in fact you have more vacancies than basically unemployed don't be surprised if people have to make decisions about putting food on the table or getting alternative employment. They want to stay. This should be a really good profession. But people are leaving because they can't, if you like, deliver their basic needs. So that's the problem that we have, is that it's just a competitive position.

They are exhausted, as I say, and undervalued. That's why they're leaving the sector. And why are so many nurseries going bust? Are they receiving enough funding? They're getting funded hours from the government. Yeah I don't think there's any ambiguity around this. Now this is an important point and I hope your listeners will make their own mind up as to whether this is an accurate place but you quoted for example the government said over the last five years they have invested 20 billion pounds into these free entitlements, etc. Back in December 2018, when we were tired of hearing this same old line trotted out, we said, well, if you think you pay enough to these providers,

give us your calculations, give us your evidence that it's enough money. What did they say? They said, go away. So we filed a freedom of information request. Two and a half years later, after battle after battle, the information commissioner's office forced them to release that information. So we got last year a redacted, heavily redacted document.

Goodness knows what was behind all the blanked out areas. But what it did say was quite damaging. It said this, their words, not mine, to adequately fund the entitlements would require an additional two billion pounds. That is not affordable. Now in that year? £4.89 on average. So you can see there is a massive shortfall. is it that when you have a young child, it's so expensive? They said, again, in the same response, that they expected prices for those parents who do not qualify for the entitlements to rise by 30% because, effectively, they would need to cross-subsidise the shortfall in payments. That is a dishonest position.

We've had a message in from one of our listeners, Neil. It's from Seamills and she says, we shouldn't expect the government to subsidise childcare when it's our choice to have children and work and we can't moan about the cost of childcare when surely you can't put a value on someone else taking care of our offspring. The most important thing in the world. What would you say about that? I would say it's really interesting that we never have this debate when a child seems to hit the age of five and they walk through the school gates. Somehow we wake up and we realise that if we fail to get it wrong in terms of their education, their development,

they will cost us hundreds of thousands of pounds further down the line. So this is about intervention. This is about prevention. This is about investment. And other colleagues around this particular table have said exactly the same thing. This is about investing in early years. Anybody who knows anything about child development will tell you that the first five years are critical. I had a meeting yesterday morning with a colleague and they were talking about, if you like, some of the they described as feral children. They talked about a 14 year old that stabbed a 13 year old. They were three year olds at one particular point in time.

That's why we need to invest. World renowned economist, Nobel Prize winning economist James Heckman demonstrated clearly that if you invest in terms of the early years, you reap the benefit tenfold further down the line. Why wouldn't we want to do that? These are people that will give more revenue to our country, they will cost us less in terms of health, and they will cost us less in terms of crime. That's why it's everybody's concern, not just parents who have children.

We've got a nursery provider here. Jenny, thanks so much for joining us in the studio what are the main challenges you're facing we're already exhausted having worked through the pandemic and having had short staff and we're tired we are now finding that covid hasn't gone away um it's still there. We've lost a lot of our professional practitioners because of the worries and the lackadaisical attitude from government towards our safety and how we were going to move forward from this. We cannot get any staff that have the right level of qualification. People don't turn up to interviews and why would they

because we can't pay them what they should be earning it's a really responsible job we have a duty of care when we get these children in if they have additional needs there is no funding that comes with that it is down to us to take that extra time, do those assessments, write those reports. There is no money in the pot to pay these staff for their extra hours. They then spend a lot of time in their own time doing those things because they want that for the children. You cannot compromise on the ground level care of the children. So therefore, you are at ground level all the time so all those additional jobs that need doing are left until your own time and so we are getting really burnt out we don't have any staff to cover for sickness we're having to close when we have sickness

because we just cannot get any bank staff or anyone to come in and quite frankly no one wants a job in child care because actually as things get worse and worse who are the people that are going to be scapegoated when something goes wrong it's going to be us but actually we can't do any more and that's our fundamental problem and most of us who work in this area are actually on benefits ourselves because we cannot get a job that earns enough. And we are usually working parents as well. So we are stuck in the poverty trap. There is no upward mobility. Why would anybody go into a job where as a manager you're still only getting minimum wage? Why would you do that?

Jenny, could I just ask you primarily have you had to cut back on what you can offer to parents and children we have to close one day a week because we just do not have the staff resources to cover that um which has been terrible for some of our parents especially the ones that work within the nhs because they don't have any options they don't set their shift pattern but we cannot safely provide a service for those children because we do not have enough staff to do so and there are no staff out there we've spent hundreds of our budget on advertising to try and get staff and we can't get any staff there is no one out there to do this job because they can earn more for far less responsibility by going and working in aldi or little or any other supermarket and that's you know unacceptable it really is the level of responsibility that we

carry is huge it is not a minimum wage job. Jenny, thank you very much for joining us. So what are the opportunities and challenges of employing working parents? What happens when it's half term or you get several flexible working requests? Elaine Stern is the founder and the CEO of The Ten Group, a global marketing and communications agency employing 35 people, a third of whom are working parents. She's also a mother of three. Thank you for joining us. What are the benefits of employing working people? Well, the benefits, I think, of employing working people,

in my experience, are that, and I'm thinking about working mothers, is that they bring empathy, they bring efficiency, and they often bring excellence to the workplace. And I think that we miss out if we let these women go. You know, someone is pregnant, they go off, they're the same person that was going to come back a few weeks, a few months later. And I think as employers, we have a responsibility to create a workplace in which women can thrive.

And that's what I've done you know I started my business my first business 25 years ago when my first son was born because I had a boss who wasn't paying me enough and wouldn't wouldn't be giving me the emotional support to come back so I started a business and grew that business to 50 people and had another two children in the meantime and worked and worked throughout but also work part-time and I and I shaped my workplace and I've shaped both my businesses to how I want to be treated I think you should treat people as you want to be treated and so I think that we as employers have a that opportunity to build a great workplace and to get

the benefit out of working parents and working mothers. And as an employer, what are the challenges? Well, there's business challenges, right? You have clients, you have work, you've got to bring in income and you've got to pay people. So there's the needs of a client. And then there's the needs of, in our case, we do a lot of production, lots of shoots. We have half terms, the last half term actually three of our working parents are producers and they all wanted to be off at different times so I think

the challenges are just sort of scheduling and making sure that those last minute jobs that drop in can be managed I think the biggest challenge having been a working mum myself is guilt you know I always talk about I think about mothers, and so many of my friends and colleagues have been returning mothers, who are grateful to go back to work. And actually, it should be the employer that's grateful. And I think that this guilt that besets us is guilt to our colleagues, guilt to our children. It's a huge emotional wrench going back to work. But we are now working, people work remotely, and our colleagues are working remotely. And I sort of, if I look back and, you know, give advice to myself, you know, 25 years ago, it's not to have that guilt. You

know, we're coming out of half term now where parents, I'm sure, are quite tired. And when your kids are young, the days go very slowly, right? But the years go very fast. And I'm on the other side and you know I can see that relationship with my kids I can see what benefits they've got out of me working and actually that time goes quickly and now it's very vital to be working so I think that there's just one other thing I always say to the working mothers particularly who've worked for me over the years I always say you will you will forget that you missed sports day. You will forget that you didn't turn up for that school play

or you weren't on the school trip with the other parents. But you will never remember the client you were with. And that's sort of how I think we should live our lives. And as employers, I think we have to celebrate the working parents we have and create that environment for them. I think there'll be a lot of people listening to you and actually nodding and feeling that sense of guilt and the pressure, which feels like it comes in all directions. Have you lost staff because of childcare struggles?

Do you know, I was talking about this with my FD yesterday, who's a mother as well. And she's been with me in both businesses. And in fact, our board is made up 70% of working mothers. And we haven't. Actually, we haven't because we've recognised the financial support that women need. And we've recognised that emotional support as well. And so I think we've lost, I think we lost one member, one producer because she was moving too far away. But then we employed her as a freelancer. And that was before COVID and remote working. How would you feel about flexible working, say from day one?

If someone came to you and said, you know what, I need flexible working. I'm not sure whether old fashioned is the right term for my age, but I'm sort of slightly mixed on this. I believe in flexible working. A hundred percent. If you want to drop your kids off, if you want to go home early, if you want to go to kids off if you want to go home early if you want to go to that absolutely do that because I know as many of us do that we work when our kids are in bed

but actually I don't really believe that heavily in remote working I valued I remember so much valuing that separation from work and home right leaving home leaving everything behind and having that time traveling to work getting a sandwich attime, and also the oxygen of the people at work. So I also think we have osmosis at work, you know, the young people learn from those with experience and vice versa. And that's a very vibrant environment to be in. And I think it's really important to have that distinction. That said, I don't, I can't remember a time where I've turned around to a working parent and said, no, you can't go back. You know, it's like, we should live our lives and our kids go. And we should be happy parents and happy working parents as well. Elaine, good to hear from you. Now,

we've heard the problems and the perspectives of parents, childcare providers and employers, and you at home. So let's discuss how we can arrive at the holy grail of an accessible, affordable, high-quality childcare system. How helpful are the government's recent proposals? You may have heard various ideas float in the past few months, from relaxing the staff to child ratios at nurseries, to our former Prime Minister Liz Truss' idea to give money straight to parents instead of childcare provisors, suspend as they please. Well, I'm joined again by

Jolie Brearley from Pregnant Then Screwed, Christine Forkerson from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Neil Leach from the Early Years Alliance and Jemima Ohaski, the CEO of the Fawcett Society. So, solutions. If you were in government, what would you do?

What would be your way of tackling what has been described as a crisis? Christine, be your way of tackling what has been described as a crisis? Christine, to you first of all, please. Well, that's a big one. And I think there's a good reason that I'm not in government. I think I would break this down into two parts. So the first thing that I would do is I would look at those relatively small changes we can make to make sure that the programmes we do have, the support we do have available, is working much better than it is right now. We've talked on this program quite a lot about tax-free child care, the fact that a lot of families don't know this exists. A lot of families who do note that it exists and are trying to use it are finding it very difficult, very

clunky, and really not suited to what they're trying to do with it. So that's one place where I think support can be made a lot better. We've talked a lot about the universal credit system and some of the deep problems that we have when we're asking these low-income working families to pay out of pocket and then wait, possibly up to five weeks in order to be reimbursed. It is a generous amount of support.

85% of childcare expenses is a lot, but as we've heard, the kind of total amount of subsidy has not kept pace with the rising cost of living and the rising cost of childcare. And so we have systems on the ground that are not working as they're intended to be working. In terms of the free entitlement, I think my priority in government would be to really think about the age profile of where we're targeting our support. Because at the moment, we have a situation where three and four-year-olds get really actually quite a lot of support from the government. Those families, by and large, families who are using

formal childcare for their three and four-year-olds, they're paying about £5 a week is the average family would be paying that. So when you compare that to what the parents of one and two-year-olds are going through who are paying sort of £45 a week at the median or £90 a week at the median if you have a one-year-old using formal childcare, there is this big disparity in the experiences of parents with very young children and parents with children old enough to access those free entitlement hours. So we've built ourselves a situation where parents come to the end of their maternity leave or their parental leave. That's a crucial time to make decisions about whether to go back to work. And they're facing the highest cost they're ever going to face and the least support they're ever going to have to do it.

And it really is just those couple of years. But the decisions that you make for those first couple of years can really shape the trajectory that your career goes back onto. Jolie, I'm going to bring you in here. What are your thoughts, please? I would echo everything that Christine has just said. I think it's really critical, though, that we make sure childcare workers are paid a decent salary for the job that they do so that we can retain childcare workers in the workforce and so that they feel valued. It's so important. These are the architects of our children's brains. We need to look after them and value them. One thing I would add, which I think is quite an interesting concept, is we do have 70% of childcare providers are profit-making businesses.

And so we have a situation where smaller businesses are being bought out by big companies. So Busy Bees, for example, the biggest nursery provider in the UK, is owned by a Canadian company. And that poses two problems. Firstly, lots of the money is going out of the country. And this is about educating our children. That doesn't make any sense to me. But also, if Busy Bees collapses, it takes with it thousands and thousands of nurseries and that will have a really damaging impact on our economy and on mothers who then can't go to work. So I think it's very complex, but I think it should be considered that all nurseries should be not-for-profit or potentially charities. What do you think about

that, Neil? Well, let me firstly say I just don't want to miss the point that many of the if you like proposals on the table at this particular point in time stem from Liz Truss and so if that doesn't scream leave them alone I'm not sure frankly what else we need to hear but I think that's quite important. What I would say is that we have no strategy in this country whatsoever. If you ask a minister, what do you think parents should be paying as a percentage of their income in five years' time? No idea. What do you think the workforce should look like in terms of its progression in five years' time? No idea. I would have an independent review, independent review that looked at our system. In the last 10 years, we have had 21, maybe 22 now, following yesterday, early years ministers and secretaries of state for education in any other business that would ring alarm bells in terms of leadership and continuity. We have this bolt-on system.

As every minister comes in, they want to put their little bit to it. So we end up with this chaotic system. Tear it up. Start again. More importantly, I guess, in terms of the principle, just to say this, if I may, Elaine, is that recognise this is a profession. This is not babysitting. This is about educating young children. Jemima, I'll come to you. Do we need a universally free childcare system or does it need just a bit of reforming in terms of where we're at now? Or would you like to see an overhaul? Yeah, I think the simple truth is we just don't spend enough as a country

public money on our childcare system. And that is why staff are underpaid and parents are paying more than many of our comparable countries. So the ultimate goal should absolutely be universal, free, flexible, high quality childcare. And that is a big investment. But actually, when we look at the evidence, when we crunch the numbers, it's clear that it pays for itself. It pays for itself in increased economic output. Women's Budget Group have estimated that that kind of affordable childcare could increase women's labour market participation. So we

generate an extra £28 billion in economic output. And because we wouldn't have childcare staff, as your listener pointed out, some of the most precious important work in our economy, working on poverty wages, we'd also see lower costs in terms of welfare spend and higher costs in terms of tax take so it really is a no-brainer but the simple truth is we do need to spend more money but looking at the numbers and crunching the numbers to have a universally free child care system it's it would cost in the region of around 50 billion pounds. Now, I understand some of that money will go back into the economy through spending and taxes. Are we likely to see that kind of investment,

which applies to people with children under the age of five? I think it's what we need and we need to be honest about that. And when you look at what the UK spends compared to other countries, we are below the OECD average. We're below even countries that are kind of similar to us overall in terms of tax and welfare spend. So give me a direct comparison then. Give me a comparison with the UK then. Sure. So Canada is increasing their spend now to what will be around 1% of GDP. We spend 0.6%. We are, and you know, Canada isn't ranked internationally as one of the biggest spenders.

We are amongst the lowest. We are below Australia, New Zealand, Japan. So, you know, when we're looking at this internationally, it's clear that we're not spending as much as other countries and we're not getting the benefits. You're right. It is expensive, but it is also clear that this is a really important way to keep our economy functioning. Women are leaving the labour market because they can't afford childcare. At the same time, we have a labour shortage. We have a productivity crisis. We've never invested more as a country in women's education women have been leaving education with degrees a higher rate than men since the 90s and yet we

have a system where in their 30s and 40s many are forced out of work at a time when they could be adding incredibly to our productivity using their skills because they can't afford to meet that cost or the or the quality of child care isn available for them. I know the Fawcett Society have produced a report comparing the UK's childcare system with places like Japan, as you mentioned, Canada, New Zealand, Switzerland and Australia. And the report also focused quite heavily on Quebec and Canada. What do they have in place there? Yeah, what they've got is really interesting. So in 1997, they began a system of a flat rate fee for childcare available to all families. And that was $5 a day. It's now gone up to $10 a day.

And that offer is now available for all children 0 to 12. So wraparound care for children in school as well. And that has seen real increases in women's labour market participation. So Quebec had below average for Canada women's employment, they broke even in 2011. And now they're four or five percentage points ahead of the rest of Canada. And it's also been incredibly popular. And as a result of that, in 2021, the federal Canadian government announced that they are going to roll that scheme out across the whole of Canada. Jolie, I'm just going to come to you now, if I may. You're a real advocate of flexible working,

four-day childcare, children at nursery four days a week, families working four days a week. I'm just going to take that over to yourself, Elaine, because you run a business. Does that work for you? It can only work if it works economically. I mean, it does work because you have to make it work. I think we're obliged to make it work. But I think it's...

Look, I have most of my staff working flexi, right? Also coming to the office three or four days a week. So I think we have to make it work because what we don't want to do is lose talented people from the workforce. So I think as employers, you're obliged to try and make that work. Jolie, how realistic is it that we could get to that stage?

Well, there is the four-day working week trial that is being undertaken at the moment that there are about 100, maybe 200 companies that are taking part in it in the UK. And so far, the results have been really positive. They've shown increased productivity and increased profitability as a result and higher staff well-being, higher staff retention, loads of benefits to reducing the number of days that you work. So you have a three-day weekend or you have a day off during the week. And we have a situation where kids are going to school nine till three and people are working eight till six.

It doesn't add up and it forces one parent to work flexibly, to work part-time and thereby reducing their income. If everything moved to a four-day working week so kids were in school four days longer hours people were in work four days and then we all had three days to spend with our kids the joy i mean what a wonderful world we would live in and as i say the research supports that this would be beneficial for companies and be beneficial for our economy elaine you're shaking your head a little bit there. Why? Because I think it's quite a jump.

I mean, I'd be interested to see this research into the profitability. I agree on productivity. I work four days a week. I still work four days a week, right? But I just think you've still got to get the fees in, you've still got to get income in, you've still got to pay people. So there's always that balance of wanting to give that financial security and support to our staff and make sure that they're taking home enough and more so they can afford to come to work

and keeping the business going. And I think I'm not quite sure, even if we tested that model, whether that would work. I think it's important, though, that we don't fall into a kind of a binary idea of what flexibility means. It means a four day week or it means being at home. You know, actually, the flexible by default policy commitment from government really, I think, is about a conversation. And there's all kinds of different flexibility that work in different contexts and for different people. So what we actually need is for employers to be thinking up front, what does work for my business? What are the options? And being open to having that conversation with people who are joining and advertising it. We know that rates of flexible working are much higher once people are in a role

than they are for jobs that are advertised. So it can be done. It's just that employers aren't thinking about that up front. And that means that women aren't able to go for jobs that are advertised. So it can be done, it's just that employers aren't thinking about that up front. And that means that women aren't able to go for jobs that would meet their needs because they don't know what's on offer. And if you can't ask in advance, and if you can't have the conversation at the beginning, you can't risk going into the job, waiting however many days or weeks and then having the conversation, what do you do in the meantime? When you advertise a job with the flexible options, you broaden the pool of people that can apply and you have your real criteria instead of a kind of meaningless criteria about can they work to a kind of a rigid model that actually that particular job may not need well

we've still got jenny bailey listening to this who runs a nursery um would that work for providers well we'd obviously be the ones who had to be open all the time um because we would need to provide that flexibility for for other parents um and that that for us usually we have children of our own would be challenging we do try to provide flexible working for our staff because most of our staff do have children. I do think that is a really good way forward. I would say through the pandemic, nearly every woman who was working had to work flexibly. They worked in the evenings and all of those times because that was the only time we could work.

So I do think it is a way ahead. But I think the best thing that we could do would be to actually fund early years adequately I mean in the last 10 years we've had 49 pence rise in our funding 49 pence in a decade minimum wage was £3.60 in 2010 it's now £9.50. It's obvious that funding is just not up to par. And that's what we need to make this work. Thank you for that, Jenny. Neil, let me just bring you in here. We've heard government proposals about changing the staff to children ratio.

We've heard about giving money directly to parents instead of nurseries and childminders. Are any of these ideas workable? Are any of these things a solution within this problem? Simple answer is no, if you take ratios. The day, it's really interesting, the day that was leaked from Number 10 in terms of a proposal. Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Ofsted, Amanda Spielman, was on the airwaves, actually on Radio 4, telling listeners that young children's development had stalled and that they needed more support, more care than ever before. And yet we're suggesting that early years educators can take care of more and more children. I've told you they're leaving

in droves because they are exhausted. And it's like some dimwit has gone what's the worst possible time that we can frankly introduce changing ratios. Let's do it when we have a workforce on its knees. Let's do it when children need more and more support. So the answer is no and the sector has rejected it. Parents have rejected it. It's interesting that the day again it was launched, we did a consultation with our members, 9,000 responses in one week. Nine out of 10 said they felt it would diminish the quality. Nine out of 10 said that they would not actually convert the ratios.

75% of their staff said if their setting adopted these flexible ratios, they would leave. And only 2% of providers said that the money would be passed back to parents. It is such a misleading, superficial statement that it's embarrassing that government even put it out.

We've got one of our listeners who's got in touch with us with an idea, with a solution. It says, it's anonymous, if there was just one thing that could be changed about childcare, the cost would be it. There should be further government support for this. If there was a second, if I'm allowed, and you are, revisiting benefits for families would be it.

The crazy rule that child benefit is not assessed on combined incomes needs to go to free up more money for working parents. I'm going to come to you now, Christine. It's a very simple question, but what is the purpose of childcare? What is the function of it? I think we've heard throughout this programme, lots of different purposes and lots of different functions. And I think that's really at the root of why this area is so difficult to get right, because you have a really important core principle of this being about supporting children to develop, helping them to reach their full potential, helping them to be ready for school. And by the way, we know that that disproportionately benefits the most disadvantaged. And so we're reducing some of the inequalities that we see as well. Set against that, we have the importance of helping parents and particularly mothers to work.

And that's a different sort of inequality, because that comes down to the gender wage gap and the inequalities that women and men have in the workforce. And then there's a sort of a third purpose, which is really about affordability and families' budgets. And are we providing families with enough support at a really difficult, really expensive time of life? I think in an ideal world, we would love to have a childcare system that addresses all of those goals. And certainly, more funding for the system can help to alleviate some of the trade-offs between them. But I think it's also important to say there probably is no system that's going to really do a brilliant job of ticking all of those boxes at once. We've heard about the Canadian model, which has done brilliantly well for helping mothers to work, but doesn't really seem to have done very much to help children develop and possibly might

have held some of them back in their social and emotional development. In the Scandinavian countries, we have the opposite situation. Those childcare systems do a lovely, wonderful job of supporting children's development, but don't seem to have much impact on helping mothers to work. And so questions like, you know, is what we want something that's very flexible, where your listener Charlie with the NHS job is able to access the care that she needs at 5.30 in the morning, what does it look like to provide high quality care at 5.30 in the morning at an affordable rate that's going to be beneficial for that child's development? There are some real crunchy trade-offs here and I think money will help, but it doesn't fully solve the problem.

We're just going to have time for one email we've just had in from Seema Brown. And there's been a theme, actually, with a lot of these emails. We both work full time, no family support nearby. Our childcare is more than our mortgage. Add in the cost of living crisis, and we have next to nothing left at the end of the month. It's soul destroying. I'd just like to say thank you. I know that's a very low note to end on, but we've had lots of interesting solutions, lots of food for thought there.

That's it from us. Thank you to the guests. And of course, thank you for listening. Thank you for listening. You can also hear previous episodes of Woman's Hour on BBC Sounds. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies I started like warning everybody

Every doula that I know It was fake No pregnancy And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in.

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