Comments:
The nursery on my current station, is only open 0745 -1715 which means a rush to get to work and if something does crop up I have to leave as they charge a fortune outside these hours
There are a few people here (Cyprus) who have recently trained to become child minders... but due to the transient nature of
families...it is not a permanent facility...which is what is desperately required.
We live away from the main RAF area (Lossiemouth) in our own home but still in a military village (Kinloss) and feel that although the local town of Forres has more nurseries, we aren’t able to use them due to my husband needing the car for work and the bus service isn’t good enough/expensive. Childcare here is a minimum 15 hours a week for a 2-3 group which we cannot justify (£260 a month) for the fact I work from home and may as well not work if I were to pay that. I’m not saying it’s an MOD issue in particular but the cost and lack of flexible child care makes it very difficult for partners to go back to work properly. My husband was recently sent away for a month with just over a weeks’ notice - and the date for coming home keeps changing. How are you supposed to arrange childcare around that?
Childcare is expensive and quite often there is a substantial waiting list, resulting in spouses being unable to work thus putting them in an impossible position. The nature of military service means working times are unpredictable and having to commit to full time childcare is exorbitantly expensive with unit nurseries proving inflexible in their approach to providing childcare. It would appear that more local civilians use such nurseries than service personnel. Such poor childcare arrangements and regular posting put service families at a disadvantage to their civilian peers, and quite often mean that service families live on 1 income, when this could be avoided. This is exacerbated due to the fact that family members are unable to support service families as would happen in civilian life due to distance, poor contact house availability and cost make it impractical for prolonged support to the service family.
I feel the military severely let’s families down in the area of family friendly working policies parental leave and recognition of the spouses work commitments. I often hear. The job comes first to my husband’s job I work on call at night and have many problems with my husband being able to care for our children hence why our childcare bill is excruciating. I feel military discount schemes or military run childcare establishments would be a valuable asset that would provide jobs and a good profit margins for the military.
I am unable to get a job doing what I trained to do due to moving every year; therefore I work in a job paying just over minimum wage. I take home £18 a week after childcare but I actually lose money when I have to pay extra in the summer holidays.
Husband is a shift worker and shifts change frequently. Childcare provider only offers set hours a week and they cannot be adapted around changing shifts. It is also horrifically expensive - around £700 per month.
With the lack of spaces of nursery on camp, we have had to go with a different nursery which is £200 more than the one on camp. Even with childcare vouchers we are still struggling.
www.raf-ff.org.uk 9
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32