The UK is once again in recession, and there is increasing evidence that it is women who are bearing the brunt of the Government's economic policies, with female unemployment now at its highest level for 25 years at 1.3 million.
Labour market statistics published in March showed that eight out of ten of jobs lost in the previous three months were women's. Predictions are that worse is to come for women, and their families, with knock-on effects for the childcare sector.
Anand Shukla, chief executive of Daycare Trust, says, 'The latest employment figures reinforce Daycare Trust's fear that parents, and particularly women, are being forced out of work and in to poverty.'
It was men who were hit hardest at the start of the recession, according to a work audit last December by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD). But it is women who are now being affected and will bear the brunt of public sector cuts when they start to bite. Women make up just under two-thirds of the public sector workforce and are even more highly represented in areas such as local government where 75 per cent of the staff is female.
The CIPD report, How Men and Women Have Fared in the Post-recession UK Jobs Market, notes, 'There is a widespread expectation that the post-recession era of fiscal austerity is likely to be as uncomfortable for women as the recession was for men. Taking into account public sector job cuts that have already occurred plus those projected by the independent Office for Budget Responsibility, the public sector will shed 850,000 jobs between 2010 and 2017, with obvious implications for the sector's relatively feminised workforce.
'Moreover, with the economy expected to rebalance away from consumption and towards investment and exports, slower growth in consumer-oriented sectors such as retail, which employ lots of female workers, could also dampen women's relative job prospects'.
FAMILY INCOME
The steep rise in female unemployment coincides with the Government's benefit cuts, and the accumulative effect of these are impacting greatly on women and families, says Dr Katherine Rake, chief executive of the Family and Parenting Institute. 'In isolation, each individual cut appears very painful but manageable for families,' she explains. 'However, when you stand back and view the Government's austerity programme in its entirety, you start to see the real picture. Families from both middle and low income brackets are facing a perfect storm.'
Although Chancellor George Osborne raised the earnings cut-off point for the loss of child benefit in March's Budget, family campaign groups voice grave concerns about the direction of Government policies.
Fiona Weir, chief executive of Gingerbread, says, 'The cut-off point for those eligible to get child benefit has been increased, with a tapering off of benefits for those earning more than £50,000, which is an improvement. However, once again single parents get the worst deal: by linking it to individual earnings rather than household, a two-earner couple could take home £98,000 between them and get child benefit, where a single parent earning £51,000 will start to lose it.'
From April the Government is raising the working tax credits threshold for families with children from 16 hours to 24 hours work a week. Parents, including early years practitioners who cannot find extra work, will lose money.
'I am sure some of our parents are going to be hit by this,' says Jayne Lewis, operations director of Highgate Day Nurseries, Swansea. 'Some of our staff want to work extra hours but I just can't offer them any more at the moment.'
Families are walking a financial tightrope, juggling their childcare and their finances. In some cases, parents are skipping meals to make ends meet. Ms Weir says, 'We hear all too regularly from single parents who, despite working long hours to provide for their families, are often forced to make unthinkable sacrifices such as eating only one meal a day to ensure what little income they have goes to supporting their children.'
Fear of unemployment seems to be driving some young women back to work early, with settings reporting a rising demand for baby places. 'We have not experienced a rise of unemployment with our female parents and carers here,' says Paula Shone, manager of West Street Nursery, Erith, Kent. 'In fact it has been the reverse, with many mums returning back to work. This may be due to our proximity to London. We also have many female students accessing the nursery.'
Mothers with young children are not necessarily the women taking the biggest hit in the unemployment stakes. It is older women who have been particularly affected - the 50 to 64 age group - along with the NEET generation (Not In Employment, Education or Training, aged 18-24).
For the older women there is little prospect of finding new full-time work in the current climate and many are opting for early retirement and, it would seem, are often then taking on childcare duties to help out their families.
CHILDCARE
Claire Schofield, director of membership, policy and communications at National Day Nurseries Association (NDNA), says, 'One of the points we have heard with the rise in female unemployment is that is not necessarily the mum with a child in a nursery who has lost her job. It is quite often Grandma who has taken early retirement and is now able to provide informal childcare.'
Certainly, one of the biggest changes that has affected all sections of the childcare sector is the cuts parents have made in the number of hours, sessions or days they are taking along with the increased use of informal care.
Katy Crysell, deputy manager of Carousel Day Nursery, Braintree, says, 'This is a commuter town and in the past few years unemployment has definitely hit childcare. Parents are asking for us to be flexible more and more often. We have had parents having to change their hours very suddenly because they have just been made redundant or their hours have just been cut.'
OCCUPANCY
The constant struggle to be sustainable is putting pressures on staff and administration costs. 'The really big factor for us is how we support all the key children,' says Karen Walker, head of children's services at the London Early Years Foundation (LEYF). 'We are looking at how key people keep up with updating the children's portfolios, making sure they have done their observations and planning for the individual child's needs.
'Once you have a lot of children part time in the nursery it increases the workload. A member of staff who had seven or eight key children full time maybe now has 20.
'We have reconfigured some of our nurseries so they are offering blocks of funded hours only so we are maintaining occupancy. We have to look at how we deploy staff so we can maximise their time and we are considering whether or not we have to have staff on term time only for funded hours - working two sessions during the day for six hours. We are looking to see if this is something that staff coming back from maternity leave might be interested in if they want to reduce their hours.'
Ms Crysell says, 'We have a waiting list for children wanting to attend for their three-year-old funded nursery education hours but fewer families now take extra hours on top of the free entitlement.'
A few years ago nurseries would have many more children on full-time places, says Ms Schofield. 'They might have retained occupancy rates but now have double the number of children they had ten years ago because there are so many more children at nursery part time as parents try to keep costs down and juggle their childcare.
'This adds considerably to the nursery's costs as all the administrative work in terms of invoicing and handling vouchers has to be done for every child.'
DEBT
Parents are clearly struggling to manage their household bills. Ms Schofield says that while NDNA members did not report that debt was a major issue in the business performance survey last November, there are increasing numbers of people paying their nursery fees by credit card. 'If people are paying for an essential like childcare with credit cards, I think it tells you how much they are struggling.
'If you look at profitability, where nurseries are making a surplus, the levels of surplus are such that a couple of bad debts can make a huge difference to their sustainability.'
Settings hope to prevent debt escalating by careful management. LEYF has arranged sessions for an independent financial adviser on a Government-sponsored scheme to give free advice on managing debt issues.
Carousel Nursery has become more flexible about payment than five or ten years ago, according to Ms Crysell. 'We would send out a monthly invoice and people had seven days to pay. We now accept weekly payments or payments from income support. We also now have individual contracts with each family rather than a generic one. Touch wood we have not had problems with debts.'
FURTHER INFORMATION
- How Men and Women Have Fared in the Post-recession UK Jobs Market by the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development, www.cipd.co.uk/NR/rdonlyres/ CA546E2D-EBCB-4A40-BD67-0152D42881FE/0/5731_Work_Audit_38.pdf
- Building Resilience in Families under Stress by the National Children's Bureau - handbook for practitioners working with, or for, families affected by mental health and/or substance misuse problems. A second edition published 9 March reflects developments in policy and services. www.ncb.org.uk/books
- The Impact of Austerity on Women, briefing paper published by the Fawcett Society 19 March, 2012. www.fawcettsociety.org.uk
