School holidays for many working parents means a cobble of camps and ad hoc childcare arrangements.
“Parents have built patchwork systems that somehow work, cobbled together from WhatsApp groups, favours, and sheer will,” writes Liz Carolan in The Irish Times today as she navigates the summer ahead.
We’d like to hear from parents – How are you navigating the summer while working?; What do you think should change?; Are school holidays too long and childcare options to few?
Carolan points out that Irish childcare maths doesn’t add up when workers are entitled to four weeks of annual leave per year, while schools are closed for about 13 weeks. This is where camps come in.
RM Block
Are you using summer camps for your children? What do you think of the quality, the hours, the variety and the cost?
Carolan has booked six weeks of camps for her daughter: “The total cost, for one child, is €757. And for this money, even optimising for longer camps across these six weeks, we’ll be getting an average of 3.6 hours of cover per day.”
Do you think the State should provide funding? Should employers be more flexible?
[ The summer juggle: How to work while the kids are offOpens in new window ]
The summer camp reality is “depositing your child at a random scout den before dashing to squeeze some work into the 3-4 hour window you have before you need to pick them up again,” writes Carolan.
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