Working Families - Flexible Working Guide
Working Families - Flexible Working Guide
Think about what is important here. This is something very individual and different to each family. You may only want parental care for your children which may lead you to working opposite shifts (if you are a two parent family) or term time/school hours working if your children are at school. You may have a child with special needs who you cannot find suitable school holiday care for, or you may have a baby or young child who does not sleep well, making you too tired to work full time. When your child starts school you may want to be able to drop them off every/some days or you may have an elderly parent who you need to go and see every day. Consider whether you might be able to get any help with the caring you are doing (if you can't or don't want to do it all yourself). Finding out about meals on wheels, internet shopping as well as more traditional forms of paid help such as paid carers and childcarers etc. may help you to carry out all your caring roles without putting undue strain on yourself.
ACTION POINTS
List the jobs which have to be done - who does them now?
For example:
e.g children must be dropped at school every day - me
children must be collected from school every day - me and after school club
weekly shopping for me
Dad needs weekly shopping done and daily meal - me or occasionally my brother Danny
Why is it not working?
For example:
e.g. £50 a week on after school club is too expensive and the younger one not happy going there anymore
Shopping with the kids is a nightmare and I always end up buying loads of things they want but I can't afford/don't want them to have
Care for Dad - it is very stressful for me to get over there every day. On my working days I have to go there in the evening as soon as Bill gets in which cuts down on my time with the children. Also I feel the caring is not fairly distributed between myself and my brother.
Think about who/how else could the jobs be done?
For example:
e.g. dropping the children - me
Collecting the children -Mon and Fri - me, Tues - Bill (husband will negotiate to leave early and make up hours by taking shorter lunches), Weds and Thurs - Carrie's Mum. I will collect Carrie on Mon and Fri
(Save £50 on three days after school club and Bill will have more time with the kids which he and they really want)
Weekly shop - internet shopping - delivery cost of £3.99 will be offset by my only buying what I really want to get.
Dad
Set up a rota as below:
Shopping
Week 1 - me, week 2 internet shopping, week 3 - Danny, week 4 - internet
shopping
Daily meal
Switch to lunchtime- Mon and Fri -me, Tues - lunch club (social services
will collect him), Weds and Thurs - meals on wheels, Saturday - Danny,
Sunday - bring Dad here for lunch.
This means instead of shopping for him every week and visiting daily to cook meal (which I want to do but simply cannot cope with), I will now only shop once a month and visit three times a week which I can realistically cope with.