£84-a-week childcare ‘is too expensive for most’
Tuesday 12th October 2010, 2:30PM BST.
Parents have criticised inadequate and expensive childcare in Guernsey, it emerged last night.
A major survey revealed that 70% of families want help looking after their children but are put off by cost – on average £84 a week.
And some would-be parents are deterred from starting families because of care problems.
A Childcare Needs Survey was carried out earlier this year on behalf of the Policy Council and more than 2,000 people were involved.
States-subsidised places were the most popular suggestion to alleviate financial pressure on parents, who were also keen to see government-run facilities and tax relief for childcare costs.
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Choices. 1. Stay at home and give your child all the love and devotion or 2. Let somebody else look after said sprog so they think Mummy is just a part time person who only looks after it when it is in bed out of the way.
Choice 1. you loose your income till sprog is permanently at school Choice 2. you pay £16.80 per day for 5 day week so that you can earn (fill in your own wage per hour and multiple by 8 then by 5 to get weekly wage which I am sure is a lot more than you would be paying somebody else to look after your sprog.) and bear in mind the childcare person has to have a clean record and property where all this care can take place insure it heat electricity water cleaning materials for when sprog pukes etc so I do not think that is an unfair price but please dont’ ask me as a tax payer to subsidise you just because you got a kid or 2 I have had mine and struggled till they were grown up
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£84 a week is what it costs here in the South of England a day for child care!
What a bargain if it is that little for a weeks childcare.
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Seems obvious to me, if you don’t have a family member prepared to care for your child and cant/won’t afford to pay for it then don’t have children.
Because those families that “want help” translation – want the taxpayer to foot the bill for their childcare can’t/won’t pay for it. Lets not forget that couples without children already pay a higher rate of tax already and subsidise the education and healthcare of those that have kids.
Having children is a choice, the consequences and implications are well known, if you can’t afford it don’t have them, we have enough spongers bleeding us dry already.
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£84 a week – myself and most people I know would love to pay only £84 a week – please someone tell me where you can get such cheap childcare!
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£84 per week, that is very cheap based on the current cost of full time childcare. The cheapest I am aware of is £225 per week. On the other hand £315 per week for full time child care (08:30 – 17:30) is also not out of the question. I therefore must assume that the “on average cost” of £84 is just for a few hours childcare per week. Good luck convincing the states to step in with any help…
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£84 pound a week !!
Where does that come from – £175 more like if they have to go full time.
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Your sums must be wrong – 84GBP per week is CHEAP!!!. You must mean per day surely.
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So don’t have kids if you can’t afford all aspects of raising them. Why should the States give some of my tax to subsidize parents who haven’t done their sums?
It’s like having a car you can’t really afford and then expecting petrol at a discount.
Too many people seem to think they deserve hand outs.
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I’d love my childcare to cost £84 per week!!!
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I always kind of believed that if I wanted something, I had to be able to pay for it myself. I wanted a car, but I waited until I could afford it. I wanted a house – same thing. The same applies to pretty much everything else in life. You don’t expect other people to subsidize things you want.
Maybe I’m missing something here, but why should having children be so different?
Can anyone explain why childless people should pay people with children to put their children in childcare?
Childcare in Guernsey is expensive because everything is expensive. Plumbers are expensive. Cleaners, gardeners, and every other kind of personal service is expensive. Child care is no different. If you want to live in a cheap wage economy, I’m afraid the phrase “there’s a boat in the morning” comes to mind…
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Where on Guernsey do you get this cheap childcare of £84 a week!?
For babys you are looking at £8+ per hour and if like me you work 40 hours a week it works out to a massive £320 a week. When they get older its a little cheaper around £5 per hour which for 40 hours is £200 a week.
£84 per week cant be for full time childcare if im wrong please share where this cheap place is. I must of missed when I rang everyone in the phone book when I was looking for childcare.
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@ Bichy
Firstly is your name meant to be bitchy?
Secondly, it is a long time since I have read anything as stupid as your comment on this page.
If indeed you did manage to bring up your two children by yourself, from the way you write, I assume that it must have been done in a States house, with benefits handouts, so why should I, as a tax-payer subsidise you?
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£84 is not the cost for a full week, the actual charges are in the region of £5 per hour i.e. £175 for a 35 week
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Oh good grief! £84 a week…….Pleeeessee Guernsey mums get into the real world, here in England we have to pay £40 to 50 pounds a day for child care. Oh and if you think you can’t afford that and try for half a day, well that just get’s set at £30 pounds so you might as well stay the whole day. Also let me define what they mean by a day. It means from about 8.30am in the morning to about 4pm. Almost impossible if you are trying to do a full day’s work of 9 to 6. (yes Guerns’s a 9 to 5 job hardly exists here anymore) often on a regular basis you can’t get away and you have to employ somebody else, if you have no family to help out after hours as well on top. Way I see it Bichy not working isn’t even an option when you have to pay over 2000 pounds a month just to house your family and pay the bills. That excludes childcare and anything else by the way, I’m talking just mortgage and utility bills here. It’s not a case of just staying at home and struggling as you put it. You just simple cannot afford not to work. I wonder if someone had said to you, you have a choice. Start a family and try and juggle everything which sadly does involve having to work if not no you can’t have children. If you really would have said, oh ok, I won’t have any children then. It’s not great, it’s tough, we all make choices but the stay at home mum is luxury for most, certainly not a choice. What really makes me cross is the people here in the Uk who carry on having four or five children with no intention of working and claim child benefit etc when I’m paying for it. I think if you had that at home you would be even more dismayed at the thought of paying your ‘taxes’ for it. When you think just how much in Uk tax we working mums are having to pay for that versus cheap childcare (I’m sorry but it is) and lower tax contributions in Guern I think you need to start looking at the issues a bit closer.
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Come on now Smug, half your post seems valid but how do you know that Bitchy-Bichy didn’t “struggle” while being married to some wealthy banker whose annual salary more than covered the 3 bed 2 bath mortgage? Perhaps the moral is.. marry for money or don’t bother?
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First off, I agree with the “if you can’t afford children, don’t have them” for a whole host of reasons, not only “cos I don’t want to pay for them!”.
However, I also take issue with people who complain at the high cost of childcare. Sorry folks, but you are paying for people’s time, the same way you do for every form of service.
If you are happy to use a childminder and your child be one of a few, that can be £6ish. If you want exclusivity (ie a nanny) then you have to pay more.
Don’t forget as we all mention, this is an expensive island to live on. We all know £6ph minimum is a joke, so let’s be realistic and say that someone needs minimum £20k to live on. That works out to nearly £10 per hour and that’s before all the costs are taken into account of being self employed, AND of compliance with all the legislation/rules etc.
Modern day childcarers (I know three) are educated in a whole range of subjects including development and psychology. They probably know (the good ones) more about child raising than a lot of parents!
If you want to pay someone else to do what is an extremely important job (child raising) then you should expect to pay for it!
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£84 is a load of tosh Guernsey Press.
If there is somewhere charging £17 per day, full time, please tell me where.
The cost is approximately £50 per day!
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Wow, £84 per week I would love to pay! I would also love nothing more than to be able to afford to stay at home to bring up my children. I have two, one who is at school, the other in childcare. My partner and I both work hard for a living and both need to work full time, however we still seriously struggle each month to make ends meet with bills,rent, food and on top of that extorionate childcare costs (£250 per week). We would love to have another to complete our little family (not to mention be able to save up to buy a house or take a family holidaY!), but I just can’t see it happening with the cost of childcare as it is. Seems we will have to wait till the younger one is also at school, so that we can afford it!
Perhaps we both need to stop work, be lazy stay at home parents and get you good people to pay for us?! Would probably have more money each month than we do now!
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Can’t afford kids? Then don’t have any. Simples.
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I do not have children and do not understand why people would expect me to contribute towards their children. We already contribute to their education etc. If I did have children I would expect to have to support them myself.
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This report doesn’t make sense. On average £84 a week? What’s the average? 40hrs, 20hrs, 10hrs? If it’s full time then it is most definitely NOT £84 a week!
Smug – if you are right about bichy then she will never admit it and will come out with some guff about how she has never claimed a penny in her life. However, I should imagine she has claimed family/child allowance and was probably the first one to complain when it was capped at 12yrs old.
Bichy – I do see where your coming from but when you make statements like “1. Stay at home and give your child all the love and devotion or 2. Let somebody else look after said sprog so they think Mummy is just a part time person who only looks after it when it is in bed out of the way.” Then you put people’s backs up straight away. I don’t have kids but should I have kids I will need to continue to work (unless Mr Millions comes along) I have plenty of friends who are mothers who work and I don’t think they are depriving their child of any of their love and devotion. It’s just simple necessity. Choosing to work rather than be a stay at home mum shouldn’t be criticized or looked at as bad parenting which you insinuate to.
Why shouldn’t child care be subsidized? Our tax money goes to child allowance and also goes on unemployment benefit where we have single mothers complaining that they can’t go to work as child care costs are too high.
Surely we’re missing a trick here?
However (with my HR hat firmly screwed on) I think there are many companies out there also missing a trick by not offering flexi time and child friendly benefits to get mothers back into the work place.
But hey, I can dream…
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A crap set of figures again from a States Department.On a par with 84,000 vehicles but some not in use
Doesn’t bode well for future States decisions
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If you cant afford children dont have them. If you happen to have fallen on hard times, then sorry its not for the taxpayer to bail you out. Its tough I know, but hey its tough for everyone. By the way £84 is cheap. I hope you havent opened a can of worms here, they will all start upping there price now, well done!
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Oh, there’s another one!
Sorry, Working mum, but £250 per week is £7.14 an hour (based on a 35 hour week). That’s not exactly a lot. How many children does your carer look after at the same time as yours.
It’s a heck of a job, childcare, whichever way you cut it. A lot of responsibility, an amount of costs (insurance, fuel, toys, home proofing (if applicable etc)) having to cover all the things a self employed has to cover – medical, pension, leave etc.
I suggest that you’re actually getting a bargain.
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To those who don’t want their taxes to contribute towards other people’s children. Those children will be contributing to your pension and medical costs when you retire. The money you and your employer are currently paying to Social Services is being used on the current pensioners. We need a continuous supply of workers to fund the system and we already have the demographic time bomb in place as we have fewer births than deaths.
We can import more workers but this will mean more ‘foreigners’ to annoy GG and is also unfair to their native countries who bore the cost of educating and training them.
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I would love to know what households were surveyed to come up with an average weekly childcare bill of £84. That wouldn’t even come close to covering my daughter’s fees for her 4 PART-TIME days at nursery per week!
I do agree that people should consider whether they can afford to have children before going ahead but I also applaud the states for looking into perhaps providing some kind of assistance for parents with pre-school aged children.
It is not easy scraping by every month to pay those fees plus a mortgage and other bills and I think that a lot of the people complaining that they don’t want their taxes going to assist with child care fees are being a little short-sighted.
Those of us that bother to work (and in a lot of cases have to if we want to keep the roof over our heads) pay taxes that go towards supporting all areas of society and infrastructure with a view to making the island a better place to live. The island has an aging population and if we want to be able to receive an old-age pension etc. then we need future generations of taxpayers around to make their contributions. These children that you are so loathe to help support now are those taxpayers that will be helping pay for you in your old age.
Also encouraging mothers who are at home now because they genuinely can’t afford to work or are lucky enough to have family support should mean an increase to the tax coffers as well.
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I agree with Lynnie, Ray and others. Some detailed explanation about exactly how the States came about these figures would be helpful.
I imagine that a few stay at home mums would knock the average down a little, but £84 per week would just about cover a week’s worth of babysitting by a friendly teenager, once free cups of tea and cake are factored in!
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That’s reassuring eh Sheila? What a comfort to know that the children of today’s scroungers will be working hard to keep the likes of you and me when we reach retirement age. As if.
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@ Billy the fish,
a bargain is £84 a week not £250!!! Seriously, what do you do for a living, I need to change jobs I think!
I appreciate what all childminders / nursery workers / nanny’s etc do and a fantastic job they do too, but I too have to do all those things you say “insurance (of different types), fuel, toys, home proofing” etc etc, the list goes on. If my childminder is looking after three under 5′s full time, that’s £250 per week per child, for 52 weeks of the year still £39,000 before tax. That is just ridiculous!!!! Even with time off for holidays, it will still equate to a small fortune.
Childcare on the island IS expensive and like I said earlier, if I wasn’t with my partner, and we didn’t have a double income I would not be able to work as I just would not be able to feed and put a roof over my children’s heads, and pay for childcare. Just impossible.
Something needs to be done in my opinion, which might not mean anything to you, but it does to me.
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Well said Karen!!
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Shiela Cataroche –
To those who don’t want their taxes to contribute towards other people’s children. Those children will be contributing to your pension and medical costs when you retire
What only the children of people who expect childcare to be provided by the state or will the children of parents who had the forseight to recognise that childcare is an intrinsic part of parenting also contribute.
That’s a total non argument, you might as well say we need smokers and drug addicts to give our doctors and nurses something to do.
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Oh the comments about this subject. Some people are very touchy! When my kids were younger I paid for childcare and never had a penny for a few years. £84.00 per week probably applied 10 years ago, more like £250 per week now. I think childcare should be subsidised here as it is in the Uk. The government took away free dental care (shame on them) and the family allowance is a lot less that the Uk so maybe they should do something to help the working parents for a change and the benefit scroungers to get them back into work. Take the supplementary of the women with loads kids and invest in childcare at a reasonable cost. Or better still only hand out money for one child like they do in parts of the USA and if you choose to have more then the tax payer should not have to subsidise them!
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Hi workingmum
I thought I said in my earlier post I was making assumptions about how many children your carer had – if it was just yours, then you were getting a bargain, that was my point.
If a childminder has 3 children, they wouldn’t normally charge the same as a nanny looking after one. But then they need a vehicle that can cope with all 3 kids, car seats, supplies, the list does indeed go on. They have to pay their tax, increased soc sec, they need to pay into a pension pot significantly (well, they should!)
We/you are assuming that at £750 per week they are working for 52 weeks a year. What about 5 weeks holiday, bank holidays (another 8 days), allowance for sick leave (commonly unpaid to childminders), say 4 weeks as companies give staff.
Immediately your earnings are reduced to say 41 weeks a year or £30,750 before tax and EXPENSES.
And that’s working on the basis that your childminders other children take up the same hours as yours does. That might not be the case.
AND…. a responsible childminder will need to think about, and allow for times when she (or he of course) might not be fully utilised. There could easily be periods where they might not be employed fully.
Quickly your £39k starts to evaporate – that is why the charge is so high in your view.
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Isn’t that what the Education wanted to do when they suggested closing St. Sampsons infants and St Andrews schools, was to look at subsidising nursery care, well I dont suppose we can have both, but of course the subsidy would have covered the whole island not just 70 or so children at those two very small schools.
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While there are so many people looking for work the States should be helping them find jobs,not helping more people back to work.
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Billythefish,
It’s my understanding that these days childminders actually do get paid for holidays etc. (I think that was something that happened as a result to changes in employment law but I could be wrong). Either way – their rates these days aren’t too far removed from the hourly rate for a nursery.
The hourly rates themselves do appear on the face of it to be good value and I am happy to have qualified, good staff looking after my daughter every day. The struggle comes when you tot up those hours at then end of every month to face a bill of between £650 and £701 to pay (for part-time hours). This takes up more than 1/2 of my monthly wage which then taking in to account all of the other payments on top of that and the mortgage leaves us with precious little for extras or luxuries.
I appreciate that this was our choice – ie to have kids and provide for them but sometimes, just sometimes it would be nice to be given a break. Even tax relief on the fees would be an absolute bonus.
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I find it appalling that pre school children are spending more of their waking hours with strangers than with their parents. If you want a career then go for it but if you want children then be prepared to bring them up.
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Blogger,
I’m not sure quite what planet you’re living on but unfortunately these are the times that we live in.
I would absolutely love to spend more time with my children and would quite happily forgo my ever so fantastic ‘career’ for that (as would my husband for that matter). Unfortunately we would also then have to forgo the roof over our heads as we wouldn’t be able to afford the mortgage or bills. But then hey….I suppose we could expect the States to provide us with a home and income for me to be able to be the good mother that I could only be by staying at home.
FYI – the nursery provides (and a decent childminder for that matter) the children in their care with confidence and experience of socialising with other adults and children, a structured environment for learning about the world and a good routine. I certainly wouldn’t classify them as strangers in that kind of context (hardly entrusting them to random people off the street are we?)and find that comment quite insulting.
What is so appalling with leaving our children with caring, qualified professionals whilst we do our best to make ends meet and provide a good quality of life without sponging from anyone else. Trust me – a lot of us working mums more than make up for that by upping the quality of the time that we spend with our happy and well-balanced children and not everyone has the good fortune to have family available to help out.
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Blogger, thanks for making it so simple. I shall give up my job, and as a single mother no doubt be criticised for being a burden on the State when I choose to ‘Bring up my child’. Forgive my delusions of thinking I could do both already and be self sufficient.
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Returning to work is more obstructed when the children attend primary school. At least when they are younger there is the option of a nursery.
When they are primary age then school finishes at 3pm and then you either have to get a nanny (very hard to find and most people dont have the extra bedroom needed for a live-in nanny) or limit your hours to school time only. Some persons are fortunate enough to have able bodied parents on the island who can pick the kids up and look after them but I and many others do not. I am very qualified (both undergraduate and postgraduate qualifications) and have a lot of experience. There is a huge amount of jobs advertised which would be perfect for me but as soon as I mention that I can only work school hours then noone is interested. It seems that the only people who have been able to find these jobs are people who worked for that company before they had children. If the school provided a couple of hours of after-school care (they could do activities or perhaps skill-set could even get involved) then I would have no problem getting a full time job. Why bring in more license holders when there are people on the island who could work but are being prevented because of that lack of after-school care? I know personally of many parents in a similar situation to me and if such a service was made available then we would be more than happy to pay for it.
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I wish that GP would clarify/correct this £84 a week- what tosh! Certainly not a “normal” working week of M-F, 9-5.
Married for just over 4 years nows ( but both a shade under 30), my husband and I would dearly love to start a family- but despite a healthy joint income,financially we’re not in the right place (or even close!) for one of us to leave work until they are at school or to pay for childcare whilst we maintain our 9-5s.
We were actually surveyed for this- and said as much- good to know it was represented and it seems we are not alone.
We’ve started to realise that we’ll just have to wait a few more years- and if that means that we only have 1 child instead of the 2 or 3 we always wanted- then so be it
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Blogger and everyone else who wants to push women back a good 40 years;
I was raised by a single working mother and have turned out reasonably well (I like to think). I certainly don’t think that I have turned out any worse than my peers who were brought up by stay at home mums. I should imagine every single one of my friends who are working mothers would love to give up work and be a full time mother/housewife but (as several posters have already stated) would mean that they would then be a “burden” on the state.
Blogger I can only assume that you are either a man (in which case just leave quietly), you are a mother yourself who doesn’t work but has a husband who makes a more than comfortable living therefore enabling you not to claim on the state or you are a mother who does have assistance from the State. Whether that is in housing or child allowance. Now I’m not drawing assumptions here but there are an increasing number in the latter camp who think it’s their divine right to not work because they have their children to look after. The fact is, if those children were given GOOD childcare (that’s a more worthy GP story I think) and the parent of course instils in them a sense of responsibility and a moral code then those children will be pillars of the community. What we don’t need to be doing is saying “well my child is better than yours because he/she has a stay at home mum”. I also have friends who are social workers and I can tell you that “stay at home mums” are not the be all and end all!
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I Le Page – In some cases they are one and the same. Should we be concentrating on the unemployed who are claiming unemployment benefit or the single mothers who are claiming states housing and child allowance? Or the unemployed mothers who can’t get jobs that work around child care hours? These are all people who are not paying into the SI pot and the trend is therefore to put off having children till later in life (if at all) and not bringing in new pension-paying-offspring.
There are around 84 countries (if not more) who have “family friendly” policies. Such as limiting the working week (France is 35 hours and you cannot sign out of it like you can in the UK for instance). Maternity pay legislation, Paternity legislation, flexible working, time off for dependants, adoption leave. Whilst the UK have these legislations Guernsey does not and I think you would be surprised how many companies out there take full advantage of this. For example how many mothers out there have had to leave work to look after a poorly child and been told to take it as unpaid or holiday? Other countries such as the US have day cares in bigger organisations or subsidise the cost of day care to their employee’s (regardless of gender).
Especially in Guernsey with the graying of society, more time to care is required from working men and women. Thus, we have a growing need for work/life balance policies.
As I said. Missing a trick.
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For all you people saying if you cant afford children you shouldnt have them, im guessing you all support free abortions, and practice no sex/every form of protection!? You can be the most carefull person in the world and still get pregnant.
We need children even if some take up tax payers money with healthcare childcare ect. All these children will grow up to be tax payers them selfs and they will be paying for us (as well as others) our pensions our old folks homes we will inreturn become a drain on society as some of you may call it, paying for us old people to live a extra couple of years.
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Maybe they’d all have us going back to the good old days eh? When Mothers stayed at home to bring their children up in a rosy glow of domestic bliss?
Those’ll be the days when working class parents couldn’t afford for the kids to go to school and get an education so had to go out to work in the fields or up chimneys to earn their keep? Or the well-off parents hired a nanny or governess so that they could socialise with the elite whilst the children were seen and not heard? The middle classes jsut had to struggle somewhere in between….
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These days there are so many young mums demanding term time work or only particular days/times. Some jobs can work around this while others cannot.
I chose to take the first few year off to bring my children up – it meant that when i started back at work i was at the bottom of the ladder but that was my choice. We went without – we had rented accommodation, a small decrepit car and no holidays. People these days want everything or they have got themselves into such a position that they cannot afford to give up work as they have such huge mortgages.
I don’t see the point in working if three quarters of your salary is going to be paying someone else to look after your child/children. Try job sharing or part time work.There are ways around childcare even if you don’t have relatives on the island. You could ‘child swap’ with friends. I did this once my children started school and i also worked unsocial hours so that my partner was home to look after the children when i was at work.
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If i want a beer or to eat i pay the going rate
If you want kids you either stay at home and look after them or pay the going rate to have them looked after. Why should the child minder work for nothing just so you can earn your money.
Sooner we do away with child benefit and tighter up on dole payments the better
soon fill the black hole that way
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Unfortunately the article was a little misleading, the fact is child care is expensive, try £1100 per month per child for full time.
The average house being 11 times the average wage means most couples have to both work to make ends meet.
To all those saying ‘if you can’t afford to have children then don’t’ how short sighted are you?
Currently Social Security pay up to £685.44 per week in Long Term care benefits for elderly in nursing homes, if this were stopped do we just give the same message? If you can’t afford to get old don’t?
If people stop having children who will pay for all the baby boomers that may end up in Long Term care in the next 20 years?
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Very misleading report and article. If £84 per week is the average families pay for childcare this is only because a large number of families are not using childcare or are putting their children in on a very part-time basis. A full time basis cost is much more likely to be £200-£250 per week.
As pointed out by some of the posts this still offers good value for money. The expectation of nursery care is very high and therefore the cost has to reflect this. The nurseries are looking after children and this requires insurance, trained staff (small number of children to staff ratios), accommodation, food, books, cleaning materials etc etc
What the States needs to focus on is the lack of nursery care available. Society has changed and in the last 20 years mothers both want to be going back to work to develop their careers and due to the cost of living in Guernsey often have no choice but to return to work.
Allowing mothers to go to work generates an economic benefit to the island – not only do the states longer have to pay unemployment benefit but they will also receive taxes and social insurance. It also increases the spending power of the family and increases the money being cycled throughout the community. Also in a lot of cases it allows the mother to be included as part of employers’ pension and health schemes and hence moving costs away from the Island’s Treasury. Sadly the current States Social policies benefit single mothers who have children and don’t wish to work.
The current situation means that unless you can afford childcare or the mother doesn’t work you are an able to afford to have children. In other words the middle working class is penalized. I believe that this contributes to the social divide in Guernsey. Those that can afford childcare have children, those on Social support have children, and those in the middle don’t. Whilst I am not advocating free nursery for all the State’s urgently needs to look at ways to support mothers allowing them to work in the knowledge that their children are being looked after in a safe comfortable environment.
Lastly we regularly see reports about the demographic time bomb that is ticking in Guernsey with its aging population. For those self centered cynics that are equating having families to running cars you had better hope this demographic bomb doesn’t blow you and your car to pieces!!
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I am a full time mum, i am so lucky i have family that help me out with my 2 children. One of my children is at school and my daughter is only 2. The 2 nurseries that are only open all day (9-6) charge £50 a day. How can that be affordable… I am not living off the states i work for my money. Arent the states / supplementry benefit meant to be encouraging mums to go back to work but how can they at these costs. It is ridiculous!!!
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I am planning on having children with my partner sometime in the next two years. we are only planning two as we can’t really afford more (unless we win the lottery) I also will have to go back to work as soon as my maternity leave is up as I can’t afford not to. I am lucky in the sense that I will have grandparents as childcare but will still need to pay for the food, outings etc.. this is what my sister did and i know she would have given up work in a heart beat to be a full time mum. My nephews didn’t lose out and are amazing little boys. every family is diffent and i don’t think children miss out on anything with both parents working. I know my nephews loved spending the day with Pa!!!
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Who un earth worked out a figure of £84 per week for child care ???????
They live in cookoo land..
£84.00 per week barely cover food and clothing for ours.
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My daughter went to pres-school from the age of 2 partly because we needed extra income but also at the time as an only child there is only so much a mum can do socially, pre-school made her interact with other children the same age as her also as she got older she started to stay for lunch 8.30 to 2 this now stands her in good stead when attending normal reception school. She is not tired at 3pm and is not shy with other children. When she was younger i was parttime this meant best of both worlds as far as she was concerned, friends and another environment in the mornings and mummy in the afternoons, but this comes at a cost £3.80 per hour for pre-school. We do not have luxuries but it was our choice and therefore our cost. It hasn’t been mentioned but Jersey do pay for all pre-school children and you can get subsideries in the UK. There is a pre-school at amherst school which is i believe subsideried by the states but this is mean tested. £84.00 bargin
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£84 per week to costly. I cannot believe how people whinge about this. People choose to have children and then moan about the cost of their upkeep. If you can’t afford them don’t have them. Or change your job so that it fits in with your partners.As long as your children are looked after properly then you should be happy to pay. Why should the tax payer subsidise child care. Maybe if more parents spent more time at home looking after their children instead of rushing them off to nanny state we wouldn’t have so many issues that we have with kids today.
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