Budget 2010 – what do ye think?

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Well put Mummy5, as i have expressed i am a working mum who relies on services such as yours, as I also use a private childminder, the reason for this is a creche would charge me approx 2200 euro for my four children to be minded but a private childminder does it for 1600 per month.
However I feel 2200 is an enormous amount of money and if I had to paythat I would be better off working half time, which would result in a reduction in service to my service users as I wouldnt be replaced due to a government staff embargo or giving up my career altogether and go into child minding myself.
I feel money should be spent on upskilling people firstly in the childcare sector.
Once they addressed the childcare issue and created a government funded placement scheme with regulated fees or even a tax deduction for working women regardless of their childcare arrangments, we could then start addressing to issue of re training and further education with both focusing on women. Women are the ones who give up their careers to rise the family and although it suits may suit some people, some women do it because they have to. A scheme to help women return to work after rising a family is severly needed in this country. Women need to be upskilled after been out of work for a number of years.We can complain all we like about social welfare cuts and tax hikes but this government need to get more people working. The only way they can do this is by showing the rest of the world we are here training, upskilling and educating each gender and we are providing childcare that will enhance the working potential of women.

We are the uptapped gender of highly motivated, highly educated women, who are willing to step up to plate and do what we have to do to get thing right be it nursing or engineering or minding children, we are all equal and worthy.
But we are being surpressed by a governemnt who is not willing to recgonise the scarfice we make to keep this nation going.

[Anonymous]

There does need to be a new system introduced to support women returning to the workforce. I did this myself so I know how it feels. I gave up work in 1999 to care for a child with special needs and in 2006 found myself in the position where I had to return to work. It was nearly 7yrs since I had last worked outside the home and a lot had changed in business. I had lost some of my confidence and knew it would be very hard to walk into a new job, organise childcare for 3 children and learn to juggle all this as well as only begining tocome to terms with the changes in my life that meant I was returning to the workforce. (I had been a carer to my daughter for those years and on her passing had, naturally, no income and had to return to work).

I accessed the CE schemes but to be brutally honest I was in 3 positions(1 I enjoyed and had some level of challenge to it) and 2 where I was even asked to ‘practice’ my typing as there was no work(I had worked as a medical secretary, sales rep secretary etc exports clerk to name but a few positions) , not allowed to access the internet (for fear we would look up dodgy sites!) and all I wanted to do was go over spreadsheets and refresh myself on them. I found myself very stilted doing CE work and it was at a very basic level. I had far more skills than they needed and felt very put down and lost even more confidence as a result of those schemes. (bar the one I enjoyed). I found there was a lack of ‘real’ work on these schemes and the biggest problem I had to cope with was ‘boredom’ and lack of mental stimulation. When it was quiet we were supposed to ‘look busy’ but I’ve gone beyond that at my age. I will do anything in my work,but found it degrading to be asked to pretend to be busy when there was absolutely nothing to do. (a situation I never found myself in, in employments I had prior to this). I also found people were of the opinion that if you are on a CE scheme then you must be ‘unemployable’ for whatever reason.My own reason was I wasn’t sure how I felt about returning to work and could I cope with it given I had 3 young children, had lost my daughter 5 mths previous, and had been out of the workforce for 7yrs. I needed the CE scheme to bridge the gap for me.

I definately agree schemes need to come into the real world and should address the concerns women, in particular, have when returning to work and I do think many issues are specific to women. I also think they shouldn’t assume women don’t have the skills, ability and if they have they should be embraced and encouraged, not stilted.

I have always enjoyed working outside the home but the trade off is not having the family you wanted. You can have the 2.2 children and pay childcare or have more and not afford childcare (if in lower end job sector).

I have also tried to access further education as a mature student but again the obstacles are many. The return to education scheme is not geared towards women with children….the back to education allowance is a great idea but in reality does not cover living costs, childcare, travel (car & petrol) and third level education extra costs. Women will not upskill if they can’t due to financial restrictions and will remain in either very low paid, part-time jobs or unemployed. Men can be in a similar position but again, I would say, going from own experience and that of people I know, that childcare would be the biggest obstacle to mums in particular.

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Mummy5 read your piece and was quite intrigued. You are the real result of a government who mis managed the so called boom. Instead of ploughing money into upskilling, re training or educating women then, instead they just kept increasing child benefit to keep "the mammies happy".
I do know how hard it is to make better your career in a such an unfair system. I went back to college as a mature student in 2000 after the birth of my first child to study social policy. I had absolutely no grant available to me way back then when there was plenty of money floating around and now a decade on and still no change. I had to work and attend college at the same time.
I now see so many people in the same situation as you. Would consider working outside the home but instead are caught between a rock and a hard place. All that needs to done first is to create a course that concentrates on women returning to work after a number of years. A course that offers on site childcare, addresses confident issue women might have, offer them choice of what they want to work or study and what is available to them, offer them meaningful choices and empower women to go for whatever dream they may have. Have a course for women run by inspirational real women. Once we have created this a second stage process come then come implace and focus on the individual women. Trying to convience a local "seeds of advancement college" to try offer something of this nature at the moment but once again it all boils down to childcare costs 👿 👿

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