SWBG blog

Flexible childcare, an ideal or a necessity? A summary

The Scottish Women’s Budget Group (SWBG) is hosting a series of events focusing on the need to further invest in childcare in Scotland. To mark International Women’s Day, we delivered the second webinar of this series, Flexible childcare, an ideal or a necessity?

Our Childcare Survey 2023 found that women on low incomes, such as those working in the hospitality and retail sector, were less able to access the 30 hours funded Early Learning and Childcare (ELC) offer in Scotland, currently available to children aged 3 or 4, and some eligible 2-year-olds, due to a lack of flexibility in service provision.

This webinar sought to discuss this issue and explore alternative childcare models and other solutions, such as flexible working, so services can better respond to the needs of families in a modern Scotland. The webinar featured:

• Dr Aleksandra Webb’s research, supported by the UWS-Oxfam Partnership, on the childcare challenges faced by mothers in Scotland's performing arts sector.
• Perspectives from childcare providers offering flexible services via Flexible Childcare Services Scotland.
• Other solutions, such as the role that flexible working policies can play in supporting families, discussed by Lisa Gallagher, Co-Founder and Director at Flexibility Works.

 

Why do we need flexible childcare services?

Dr Aleksandra Webb’s research helps show us.

Focusing on mothers whose job (fully or partially) involves performing on stages, on radio or similar, it provides a glimpse into the difficulties experienced by women whose work does not adhere to the traditional 9-5 schedule.  

It’s clear that managing work and childcare is difficult for mother-performers. Their work conflicts with existing childcare provision, as nurseries tend to be inflexible and incompatible with work patterns in the performing arts and entertainment sector, which can mean mothers often lose out on the statutory state-funded ‘free’ hours.  This problem continues for school age children, with a lack of suitable ‘wrap-around’ childcare outside of normal school hours, such as breakfast or after-school clubs.

Mother-performers also struggle to find suitable childcare solutions particularly when they lack personal networks through which unpaid childcare can be provided. Finally, Aleksandra drew attention to what’s called the ‘double pay’ penalty, which happens when mother-performers pay for regular childcare fees as well as any childcare costs during periods when artists perform away from home.

Two key policy learnings emerge from these findings:  

• Firstly, greater recognition of the needs of parents working in non-standard forms of paid employment is crucial. This means increasing funding for and improving access to flexible childcare services, including wraparound childcare.
• Secondly, childcare solutions should be co-designed with parents, including those working out with standard forms of paid employment. 

Is it possible to deliver childcare flexibly?

In short, yes.

While Aleksandra’s presentation centered around the reasons why the availability of flexible childcare services is crucial for gender equality, Susan McGhee, CEO at Flexible Childcare Services Scotland  (FCSS), put the focus on ‘how’ to make this possible from a provider’s perspective, and the difference it makes for families.  

Flexible Childcare Services Scotland was created in response to parents being unable to take up employment or education offers due to lack of high quality, flexible, accessible and affordable childcare services. Starting as a pilot project in Dundee, it scaled up to its current form, with seven settings across Scotland.

Amongst its different features, this service offers the possibility of making bookings (and payments) by the hour, changing booking patterns week to week, requiring no deposits or holiday retainers, and can cater for children and young people, from birth to 16 years.

The results speak for themselves, boosting incomes and improving parents’ mental health:  

• 77% of parents using the service said that flexible childcare options helped them work more.
• 48% said that their household income had increased by 0-£2,000 per year.
• 12% it increased by £2,000 - £5,000 per year.
• 21% said their household income had increased by £5,000 + per year.

The survey also showed that more than half of the families using the service fall within the ‘priority groups’ identified by the Scottish Government as part of their efforts to deliver Scotland’s legal child poverty targets, including that fewer than 10% of children live in relative poverty by 2030.

Of course, there are difficulties running a service where there are no set bookings, but it’s still based on occupancy levels that guarantee business sustainability.

To help achieve this, Susan explained that FCSS uses Caerus, a ground-breaking childcare management software designed to help providers advertise and manage their services to offer a flexible model. She believes this software will allow FCSS to increase the scale of flexible childcare in Scotland.

While achieving maximum occupancy is harder using this type of model, delivering childcare flexibly is also more expensive due to higher labour hourly rates and other additional costs linked to providing wraparound care. However, Susan highlighted that this investment also puts money directly back into families’ pockets, further reducing poverty and boosting the local economy.

What other solutions exist?

Our final speaker, Lisa Gallagher, from Co-Founder and Director at Flexibility Works, got us thinking about how childcare and flexible working complement each other when it comes to helping parents (particularly mothers) balance their life and work commitments. Additionally, flexible working can also help businesses, the wider society and the economy by making it easier for employees to stay in work.

Flexible working can be about where someone works, when someone works and how much someone works. In other words, flexible working ensures workers have more autonomy over working patterns, which in turn can help with saving on costs, including childcare (i.e. breakfast clubs). Unsurprisingly, at 25%, the top reason why people work or want to work flexibly is due to childcare needs, according to Flexibility Works’ own research, followed by wellbeing (17%) and mental health (10%).

Flexible working is not just for office workers. While it might be difficult for those in frontline services to fully work flexibly, Lisa says there is still a degree of flexibility that can be applied to all professions. In relation to this point, she shared 10 practical actions which frontline workers say make a difference to their work/life balance, such as working compressed hours or being given time to pop out for small amounts of time during working time.

The benefits of flexible working:

• 66% of women looking to get back into work say being able to work flexibly was ‘essential’ for them to take up employment.
• 76% of unemployed adults looking for work have turned down a job because it wasn’t flexible.
• 35% of working women said that flexible working supports them to stay employed and support themselves and their families.
• 71% of employers said flexible working has been good for them; reducing sickness or increase the quantity and quality of candidates during recruitment while maintaining productivity.

While the focus of the webinar was about the role of ‘flex’ in supporting families to balance work and caring commitments, the benefits of flexible working go beyond this, and as such, Lisa called for all public bodies to lead by example with good working practices. In relation to its links with childcare, Lisa recommended that flexible working and flexible childcare is championed as part of the economic argument within the Scottish Government’s “New Deal for Business Group” and advocated for continued support for programmes that support women to return to work, should they choose to do so.

Increasing flexible childcare offer in Scotland

The availability of a wide range of childcare services is an important part of the puzzle to support families enter, stay or improve their employment prospects. Equally, ensuring flexible working is available to parents is another crucial solution to help families balance work and life commitments, including childcare. And for women, such measures can help to close the gender gap in the labour market, improving their economic prospects.

Making care visible and recognising the economic contributions that investing in childcare, and flexible childcare, has on the wider economy will be two of the key themes that we will discuss in the third webinar of this series. Keep an eye on our socials LinkedIn, X (Twitter), Facebook and Instagram 

 

 

This webinar series is supported by Oxfam Scotland