The UK’s largest childcare service is offering one hour of free childcare to enable mothers to attend their cervical screening test, after the number of women attending fell to a 20 year low this year.
Childcare.co.uk is an online service for parents and childcare professionals, dubbed ‘the easy way to find local childcare’. After seeing that some child carers across the UK were providing their services for free so women could attend their smear test, the company decided to roll out the initiative across their site, with hundreds of child carers signing up so far.
‘There’s been a lot in the media about a fall in women not attending smear tests for various reasons, and I suspect a main one for mothers is not finding the time around their children,’ says Richard Conway, founder of Childcare.co.uk, ‘We wouldn’t want women missing out on their smear test because of a lack of childcare and we loved that individual child carers were offering this, so we thought we’d help out. Within the first few hours of us asking our members, we had more than 500 child carers sign up to the initiative. We hope this will make a huge difference.’
Every year in the UK, around 3,000 women are diagnosed with cervical cancer, and near 700 women die from the disease. With one in four women eligible for smear tests (those aged between 25-64), the 20-year low has shocked many into action. Just last week, Treatwell announced their Life Saving Wax campaign in conjunction with Public Health England- aiming to empower beauticians to discuss cervical screenings with clients and normalise the conversation to encourage more women to attend.
Just last month, we spoke to Gemma Cairney about the importance of cervical screenings, who spoke about the important of fitting such potentially life-saving tests into our lives, and the fact it’s a luxury many women around the world are privy to.
Given so much stigma surrounds the screening, many are hoping to eradicate the myths around the test and in turn increase uptake. Of course, stigma and embarrassment aren’t the only reasons women aren’t attending tests. With sexual health clinics closing at rapid rates and NHS cuts making appointments harder and harder to achieve, many women find the appointment difficult to fit into their busy lives.
Reducing the added stress of finding childcare – and the money for it – to attend the screening will be sure to encourage more women to go. At the very least, it will start the conversation, and with shocking statistics like these- it’s clearly a necessity.
To find out more about the campaign and get your free hour of childcare, click here.
For more information about smear tests and cervical cancer, visit Jo's Trust.