Childcare Costs Mean A Choice Of Debt Or Unemployment For Many Parents

Rather than facilitating work, the huge cost of childcare in the UK is a daunting obstacle – and government cuts worsen the bind.












David Cameron visits a nursery in London. His government's reduction of tax credits has made childcare even more costly for working parents.

I could understand why my bank manager was looking at me like that. It did sound a bit stupid. "You're about to start a job, and that means you need to extend your overdraft?" he said, dubiously. After years of scratching around as a student, I was finally about to draw a wage – but first, I needed to get myself just a bit deeper in debt.

I have two children, so before I could set foot in my office, I needed somewhere to put them, and childcare has to be paid for in advance. That's no minor outlay here in the UK, where we have the highest childcare costs relative to household income of anywhere in the world. A survey by the Daycare Trust and Save the Children explains how much of a barrier and a burden this can be, particularly to families on low incomes. Of the parents questioned, a quarter said that the cost of childcare had caused them to get into debt, but it's the poorest families (those with a household income of less than £12,000 a year) who experience the most crippling effects.

While the better off may have to compromise on swimming lessons or music tuition to cope with higher-than-inflation rises in nursery fees, the more impoverished are often forced to cut back on essentials such as food or heating to make up the difference. And sometimes, ends simply can't be met: a quarter of those in severe poverty said that they had given up work because of childcare costs. A third of them had passed on a job offer for the same reason, and a quarter reported that the expense of childcare had prevented them from taking up education or training.

Rather than facilitating work, childcare becomes a daunting obstacle, keeping parents out of the workplace – and the poorer a family is, the more likely it is to remain in poverty for the lack of money to cover nursery fees. Single-parent families without savings or access to credit are effectively shut out of work.

The government likes to talk about getting people off welfare and into the workplace. "Over the last decade, thousands of people were simply abandoned to a lifetime on benefits, and a staggering 1.84 million children are living in homes where no one works," said employment minister Chris Grayling last week. Rightwing analyses talk about the "lack of work ethic … helping to fuel levels of unemployment".

But it's practical, financial limitations more than nebulous psychological causes that are often keeping parents from becoming employees, and the government's actions so far seem likely to worsen the childcare bind. Working tax credit was sliced in this year's budget, so that it now covers only 70% rather than 80% of childcare costs – a huge difference in the finances of those who need help the most. As the cuts agenda combines with a sneering rhetoric of disdain for the unemployed, this just seems like one more way of keeping the poorest poor, from cradle to grave.

David Cameron Accused Of Destroying NHS With Privatisation Plans

DOCTORS last night accused David Cameron of plotting to smash up the NHS as he sets out plans to rush through privatisation of the historic public service.













Critics fear the move will lead to closed hospitals, lengthy waiting lists, rationed medicines and a steep decline in the quality of care for patients.

And staff warn health reforms he will put before Parliament on Wednesday will spell the end of the NHS as we know it in a kick in the teeth for the dedicated staff who have worked ­tirelessly over the decades to provide free care for millions.

In a key speech today, the PM will say he wants more “competition” and “greater independence” for hospitals and schools. And in a worrying sign for thousands of workers, Mr Cameron is to claim he wants “one of the great legacies of this Government to be the complete modernisation of our public services”.

But experts fear the move is a cynical ploy to flog off large parts of the NHS to private medical firms who will put profit before health.

Mr Cameron was also accused of breaking his pre-election promise that there would be no more NHS “top-down” reorganisation.

Dr Clare Gerada of the Royal College of GPs said the shake up being pushed through by Health Secretary Andrew Lansley could “remove the letter N from the letters NHS”. Mr Lansley is planning to hand control of 80% of the NHS budget to groups of GPs or consortia who will be ­responsible for buying ­treatments, operations and drugs for their patients.

Strategic Health Authorities and Primary Care Trusts will be axed. In his speech today Mr Cameron will boast that 140 GP consortia are already poised to start work.

But a report by the NHS Confederation which ­represents doctors, ­administrators and medical groups, said the reforms were ­“extraordinarily risky”.

Shadow Health Secretary John Healey said: “This report is a big red warning light ahead of the ­Government’s legislation. The more health experts see of the plans, the harder they find it to say something in support.

“The NHS is David Cameron’s biggest broken promise to date. He made the personal pledge to protect the NHS and his Coalition Agreement could not have been clearer in saying, ‘We will stop the top-down internal reorganisations of the NHS that have got in the way of patient care.

“The policy aims of more patient involvement and clinical control of commissioning are sound but can be achieved by the evolution of Labour’s reforms, not Mr Lansley’s revolution of NHS organisation.

“The report is a comprehensive demolition job on the Conservative-led Government’s handling of the NHS. Ministers are putting unprecedented pressure on the NHS by forcing through this high-cost, high-risk internal reorganisation and breaking their promise to protect NHS funding.

“Everyone saw big improvements in the NHS with Labour, but many great gains for patients are being put at risk by this reckless reorganisation.

“The report confirms that those who run our NHS see the Government’s reorganisation plans as a cocktail of instability and uncertainty, laced with broken promises.”

Lib Dem Andrew George also attacked Mr Cameron’s planned changes. He said: “The structures the Government is putting in place put at risk the public sector ethos of the NHS.”

He claimed Mr Lansley was allowing private firms to “cream off” the best bits of the health service.

The Confederation warned that the Government’s plan to allow “any willing provider” to carry out NHS work would lead to the further privatisation of the service. It warns that the NHS will have to shrink to make space for private firms and says the “closure of existing services will be ­necessary”.

Mr Cameron will defend the changes, saying they will be carefully “worked through”.

David Cameron Accused Over School Policies By Disabled Boy's Father

David Cameron was accused today of seeking to segregate disabled children in the education system by the father of a boy with spina bifida who tackled him as he left a General Election campaign speech.














Jonathan Bardley, who confronted the Conservative leader with his wheelchair-bound son as he left the event in south London, voiced his concern about Tory plans to "end the bias towards the inclusion of children with special needs in mainstream schools".

He told Mr Cameron about the two-year struggle he had faced to get seven-year-old Samuel into his local mainstream school, and said the existing system was already biased against disabled children being educated alongside their able-bodied peers.

Mr Cameron insisted that, as the parent of a disabled child himself, he was "passionate" about helping them get the education that was right for them and would not do anything to make it more difficult for them.

But Mr Bardley said: "It is the wrong way to go. You are not representing the needs of children in mainstream education. You want to segregate disabled children."

The Conservative manifesto states: "The most vulnerable children deserve the very highest quality of care, so we will call a moratorium on the ideologically-driven closure of special schools.

David Cameron Accused Of Second Betrayal Over Care For Disabled Children

Heather Walker said the overnight respite provision for 14-year-old Peter, who has cerebral palsy, epilepsy, is paralysed on one side and cannot speak, has recently been cut.













She is now only able to leave him at a Priors Hill Children's Centre in Macclesfield on Saturdays and for five hours every other Wednesday.

Mrs Walker, 54, said the strain of looking after Peter – whom she adopted 10 years ago - was proving too much and she felt she had no option but to return him to care.

Her plight was highlighted a week after Riven Vincent accused Mr Cameron of reneging on an election promise to continue providing support for her daughter Celyn.

The prime minister, whose disabled son Ivan died in 2009, met Miss Vincent on the campaign trail and assured her the NHS would be safe.