Help hard-working families: Catherine’s Story
“There are many reasons why people opt for a nanny to look after their children. Being financially advantaged is not the only one.”
Did you know that nannies are the only childcare provider currently excluded from the Government’s 30 hours free childcare scheme?
This prevents many families from accessing this flexible form of childcare, and unfairly disadvantages families who already rely on nannies. We’ve asked our Nannytax customers to share their stories about their experiences, why they rely on a nanny, and how being excluded from the 30 hours free scheme has impacted them.
Here’s Catherine’s Story
Catherine Gough, from Hertfordshire works in adult social care for local Government. Her daughter Indigo, now two-and-a-half years old, was born with a congenital anomaly where her stomach was not connected to her oesophagus. Indigo was tube fed from birth and, after multiple surgeries and time, has progressed to tube feeding at night only.
“We rely on a nanny two days a week, two days are covered by family, and I am at home one day, as my employer lets me compress my full-time hours into four days. But family won’t be able to help us out long term, so we’ll need to rejig our childcare arrangements in the near future.
Indigo is only now just starting to explore food and is slowly learning to eat; she missed out on those key development milestones with weaning where it comes quite naturally, so it is quite a hurdle to overcome. Due to the dysmotility in her oesophagus (the muscles don’t work in the right way to push food down), food is likely to get stuck and mealtimes also require a lot of patience and encouragement which is why she requires 1:1 supervision whilst eating. Other childcare settings are not able to accommodate this and usually not without extra funding.
The other issue is that every time she gets ill, so much of the progress she has made is reversed, something which happens all the time when children are at nursery. One-to-one childcare is really our only viable option right now.
The nannies we’ve had have been amazing in ensuring that Indigo gets the support that she needs with her tube related care as well as having a big influence on her progress with eating. Safe in the knowledge that she is getting the level of support, this has allowed me to get back to work and has had a huge positive impact on my mental health.
We recently moved to be closer to family and our mortgage costs have doubled. If we could access 30 hours free to pay a nanny, it would help enormously. As it stands we cannot afford more nanny hours – we can only just cover our bills each month. We will be stuck when family can no longer continue.
There are many reasons why people opt for a nanny to look after their children. Being financially advantaged is not the only one.”
