Can’t Find Childcare After Maternity Leave? This Service Will Help

And why I’m still angry after finding it

What if I told you there was a service designed to help you if you can’t find childcare?

I recently found out about a fascinating little thing: childcare brokerage. How I didn’t know about this before is absolutely beyond me.

Why? Well it seems like the exact sort of thing all the professionals should have been pointing me to whenever I said “It’s impossible to get childcare around here”.

But hey, I’ve found it now. Right when my youngest is starting school and I am far less likely to need it again.

I’d like to make a bit of a song and dance about it though, as it might help some other people struggling to find childcare. It’s not as if they’re really pushing this information to people who need it.

“It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard’” — Douglas Adams

I’ve been ranting and raving about the lack of suitable childcare in the UK for some time. This brokerage service is the beginning of the answer to parent’s problems.

Here’s what it is.

From A County Council Website

What is the childcare brokerage service?

Childcare brokerage is a requirement of Childcare Act 2006, which means local authorities must provide extra support for families to help them access childcare and other support services. The Childcare Brokerage Service is provided by Suffolk County Council’s Early Years and Childcare Service.

The type of help offered depends on the families individual circumstances, but childcare brokerage can help parents and carers to:

Find suitable childcare options which meet their needs and the needs of their children.

Visit childcare providers together accompanied by one of our staff.

Find emergency childcare or alternative childcare at short notice.

Access childcare and other services if they or their child has a disability or special needs.

Access any financial support they are entitled to which helps pay for childcare.

Understand the information available to them, for example if a parent has a visual impairment, language or literacy difficulties. — Suffolk County Council Website

This is something that is enshrined in law in the UK, so all councils most likely have something similar.

This is fantastic — you can literally say “Hey Council, I was planning to work standard 9–5 hours, so I need childcare cover from 7:30 am until 6 pm Monday to Friday. The best I can do is secure Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9–3 pm. Can you find me something that actually works?”

And then they have to face the prospect that there is literally no way this parent can work a 9–5 role unless they do their own jobs better and sort out some decent childcare in the area.

You can also say “Hey, I have a job interview on Monday, can you help me find childcare quickly?”.

This is like magic.

That’s what it’s FOR.

Why is This Important?

You might not see my point. You see, parents in the UK have been screaming about the lack of childcare provision for a while now, while the government has simply been writing off many parents (mostly women) as choosing to be economically inactive.

Most importantly, this forces the council to assess whether there is sufficient childcare provision in your local area. And if enough people are using the brokerage service as a way of making it really clear they’d prefer to be economically active, then the council has to step up and try to do something.

This will have some sort of immediate effect to help you if you try to use the service, but it also has a longer more significant effect for your local area by way of better infrastructure for the future.

Great, huh? Better than writing to your local MP and parish council (which you can also do).

Why Am I Angry About This Childcare Brokerage Service?

I’m not angry that this childcare brokerage service exists — it’s actually brilliant news.

I’m angry that the service isn’t being drowned in requests from parents right now.

I’m angry that people went to great lengths to enshrine it in law so we have the right to use the service, and yet none of the parents I know who struggle with childcare have ever heard of it.

I’m angry that I stumbled upon it on a website that was listing the variety of childcare options available. This makes sense if you’re a council web designer, I’m sure. But to the customer (parents), we often look at the variety of childcare options well before we need them, make a decision about the sort of childcare that best works for our needs and then seek out those sorts of childcare venues, finding something that works best and making do with what’s available. It’s only when things go belly up that we’re in need of the brokerage service, and we’re not necessarily searching for “Information on the types of childcare, finding a place for your child and what questions you should ask childcare providers”.

I’m angry that it wasn’t specifically mentioned to me many years ago.

I’m angry that it’s not advertised in Job Centres, Parish council newsletters, schools, etc.

I’m angry that it’s not mandatory for childcare providers to give you details of this brokerage service if they ever say they can’t offer the hours or days that you require.

I’m angry that when nurseries cancel your childcare for the day and disrupt your work plans they aren’t obliged to give you a flyer for this brokerage service. Can you imagine if the council brokerage service got a call from 15 anxious parents looking for emergency childcare every time their local nursery closed one of their rooms due to not meeting ratios from a staff member being off sick? This used to happen to me weekly. I think the council would soon learn to have childcare staff ready to temp in a facility for the day rather than dealing with 15 families every time.

I’m angry that it’s not handed over as a flyer to any job seeking parent who says “But I can’t get childcare before I have a job. And how am I supposed to get someone to look after the kids when I have an interview? Oh, and none of the childcare centres have places, let alone hours that can cope with a 9–5”. Instead of handing out universal credit sanctions to single mums like flyers for discounted coffee, maybe the DWP could actively help the parents to find adequate childcare by directing them to this brokerage service from their local county council.

I’m angry that women in the UK are economically inactive, underemployed, or retraining into entirely new professions in order to work around the inadequate childcare provisions, instead of using this service.

I’m angry that when my local childcare closed and caused a bunch of stressed-out parents to consider starting a co-op childcare facility of our own, no one offered us this information on childcare brokerage. It should be mandated that parents of childcare facilities that close are given information on this brokerage service by the facility that’s closing, by the council directly, and by way of an advertisement in a local news source.

I’m angry that childcare facilities across the UK are closing all the time since COVID hit and the cost of living went up and that I bet most of the affected parents didn’t get told about this brokerage service.

If we don’t know such a useful thing exists, we tend to struggle on our own and not get the help we need.

Make the information available to the people who most need it when they most need it.

The Irony That Burns Me

The biggest irony for me is that I had to turn down a job I was offered at my local County Council largely because of childcare issues. I was in a hybrid remote position with another company at the time, and when I tried to sort out childcare for the new job I realised it was going to be impossible. The childcare my younger kids were in couldn’t take them every day from 7:30 until 6 p.m. (which would have been a stretch for me to get to work on time anyway), and they definitely couldn’t extend the hours further so I could take the train in. Meanwhile, the after-school club for my older kids told me they didn’t have staff on Thursday afternoons. Plus, I had to be there by 5:30 pm to pick them up.

And let’s not forget that I would be paying most of my wages towards childcare on every day that I was in the office.

In the end, it made sense to stick with the hybrid remote role, even though I really wanted to work for the council.

In essence, the council’s childcare provision, the government’s childcare rebates, and the council’s train service weren’t sufficient for me to work for the council.

Go figure.

What We Can Do

Unpacking this big rant into something useful, here’s what parents in the UK can do to improve their own situation and local childcare availability if they can’t find suitable childcare:

• Talk to your local council about their childcare brokerage service: get your immediate childcare needs met and improve things for your neighbourhood.
• Talk to your local MP and council parish about the lack of childcare locally and about advertising the local county council brokerage service.
• Talk to your MP about making it mandatory to give childcare brokerage information to parents in areas where a childcare facility has closed, in Job Centres, and in local news.
• Talk to your local county council about advertising their childcare brokerage service more widely.
• Use this brokerage service AND TELL EVERY PARENT YOU KNOW.
• Make sure the council knows that the demand for better childcare is there by using their service to help yourself.

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