Two years ago, Sally, a 39-year-old marketing executive from Manchester returned to work after maternity leave after securing a place for her daughter at a local nursery. It closed after a year due to staffing, so she found another one further away. ‘It’s now entering its second week of closures due to staffing issues, and I’m going out of my mind,’ she says. ‘My partner and I keep taking time off work, or I work with her at home, which makes me feel guilty because I either ignore her to work or ignore work to be with her. There’s now talk among parents that this nursery will close too.’
Meanwhile, another mother told us: ‘Our local pre-school is full. I managed to get a place at one in the next village along, but that’s closing too.’
These cases are far from isolated ones. Nurseries are closing at an unprecedented rate due to underfunding, rising energy costs, and staff shortages. This month, the charity Pregnant Then Screwed (PTS) said it had been ‘inundated’ with messages from parents whose nurserieshave suddenly closed.
The Early Years Alliance says the UK’s childcare sector is currently in the midst of the worst cost, recruitment and retainment crisis in over twenty years. According to their new report, over 80% of nurseries find it hard to recruit staff, almost half have been forced to stop taking on new children due to lack of staff, with a third of nursery staff saying they’re considering leaving the sector altogether. Meanwhile, new Ofsted figures show the number of childcare providers in England has dropped by 4,000 between March 2021 and March 2022.
Schools aren’t faring much better, with recent reports suggesting school leaders are holding ‘crisis meetings’ over the summer holidays and considering three or four-day weeks to manage the cost of soaring energy bills and teacher pay rises.
As well as affecting the childcare sector, where 98% of the staff are female, nursery closures are also keeping parents out of the workforce, and hitting mothers the hardest; one study from PTS recently found 43% of mums are considering leaving their jobs due to the cost and availability of childcare, while 40% work fewer hours than they’d like to – or are in jobs less senior than their ability – to reduce childcare costs. Which is why Grazia launched its ‘Childcare Change Now’ campaign last year.
‘For years we have been warning the Government that the childcare sector is on the brink of collapse, and this is what we are witnessing right now,’ says PTS founder Joeli Brearley. ‘We are being inundated with messages from frantic mothers who are being forced to leave their job, thrusting more families into poverty. If their local childcare provider closes, it is almost impossible to find suitable childcare elsewhere, with our data showing 41% of parents say there is at least a 6 month waiting list for other providers.
‘Canada, Switzerland, Australia, and Japan have all recently committed additional funding to grow their childcare sector as they realise this is good for the economy. Meanwhile, we have no credible plan and no commitment from the Government to address our childcare crisis.’