Shocking new statistics from Pregnant Then Screwed have laid bare the extend of the UK's childcare crisis, ahead of the Government's Spring Budget.
As part of their Cry For Help campaign, the group surveyed more than 24,000 parents and found that three quarters of mother who use formal childcare say it does not make financial sense for them to work.
The survey also found that 1 in 4 parents (26%) who use formal childcare, say that the cost is now more than 75% of their take home pay. Depressingly, 1 in 3 (32%) parents who use formal childcare say they had to rely on some form of debt to cover childcare costs.
As the government and Labour both begin to make moves to grab votes ahead of the next general election, the group found 96% of families with a child under three years old are likely to vote for the political party with the best childcare pledge in the next election.
The survey forms part of the Cry For Help campaign, which also sees a specially formulated child's cry play out across Spotify on the billboards around London. Developed in partnership with Professor Lauren Stewart, Professor of Psychology and founder of the Music Mind and Brain MSc course at Goldsmiths, University of London, the piercing and unignorable sound of a baby’s cry will bring to life the sheer scale of the childcare crisis, and to symbolise the cry for help from parents across the UK.
1 in 10 (11%) parents now say that childcare costs are the same or more than their take-home pay per day. For a staggering 1 in 5 parents (22%), childcare costs are more than half of their household income.
The UK's childcare costs are now in the top three most expensive across the developed world (according to data from the OECD) - 4 in 10 parents (45%) who use childcare have shared that today they often find themselves choosing between paying for childcare and household essentials.
Joeli Brearley, founder and CEO of Pregnant Then Screwed, said: 'This is our ultimate cry for help. Parents are at the end of their tether. Many have now left the labour market, or work fewer hours, because our childcare system has been abandoned by this Government. We don’t just have a cost of living crisis in the UK, we have a cost of working crisis with 1 in 10 mothers now paying to go to work; and that’s if they can even secure a childcare place - we’ve lost thousands of providers in the last year because they simply cannot afford to remain open.
'Rather than focussing on "getting people off the golf course" why not invest in the vital infrastructure parents need to be able to work? It’s important to remember that this isn’t just a parenting issue, this is an issue for the whole of society - we are haemorrhaging talented, skilled women from our healthcare sector, from teaching and other vital public services because of our unaffordable, dysfunctional, inaccessible childcare system. The question isn’t whether we can afford to invest in childcare, it is whether we can afford not to. Unless we want to lock parents out of the labour market entirely then we need investment and we need it now.’
Women with young children feel let down by the Government; 98% of women using childcare think that the Government is not doing enough to support them.
Franki Goodwin, Chief Creative Officer at Saatchi & Saatchi, who helped develop the campaign, said: 'If you’ve ever tried to do anything whilst there’s the sound of a baby crying nearby… it’s impossible… even if it’s not your baby. Humans are hardwired to take notice of this sound and we’re proud to have partnered with Pregnant Then Screwed to create a campaign impossible to ignore and we hope that in these weeks before Mother’s Day, our message will be heard and listened to.'
Becca Lyon, Head of Child Poverty at Save the Children UK, said: 'The evidence of our broken childcare system is there in plain sight – it is not working for parents, children, or providers. These statistics confirm what we are hearing from the parents we support – many of them would love to get back to work or increase their hours, but they simply can’t afford to.
'We need a childcare guarantee - universally accessible, affordable childcare from the end of parental leave to the end of primary school. This would allow all children to benefit from quality childcare and early education and help parents get into work.'