The UK’s childcare is in a state of crisis. Costs of childcare, particularly in London, are prohibitively high. The majority of nurseries are privately owned and run for profit, and last year there was an 80% increase in the number of nurseries that became insolvent. But it doesn’t have to be this way. A diverse range of parent-led models of childcare provision offer an alternative future, one in which childcare is affordable, high quality and available to all.

Britain has the second most expensive childcare in the OECD – 27% of family income is spent on childcare, compared with an OECD average of 12 per cent. This is particularly acute for parents in London, where part-time nursery prices for a child under 2 are now 35.9% higher than the national average, according to the Family and Childcare Trust. That’s £158.73 a week, compared with £116.77 a week for the rest of the country. Between 2008 and 2015 these prices have risen above inflation while parental wages have been stagnating.

While the government has pledged to increase free childcare hours for working parents from 15 to 30 hours from 2017, this policy fails to examine the quality of childcare that will fill those hours. And yet it is the quality of childcare delivery which needs fixing. Profit margins are tight in childcare. This means that nurseries are often forced to pay low wages to keep their fees affordable. This in turn demoralises and deskills childcare workers, increasing staff turnover and reducing the quality of care for children. Research by SureStart shows that only high quality childcare can improve children’s outcomes. Childcare settings that cannot afford to hire or train childcare workers with early years graduate level qualification miss out on the significant quality boosts highly-qualified childcare workers can bring.

But alternatives are possible, and at an East London Community Centre parents are coming together to demonstrate one model of affordable, high-quality, early years provision.

25 families are working together to offer full time day care for their children, aged between 2 and 5. This is parent-led childcare. The nursery is owned co-operatively and employs five permanent staff, 3 of whom are degree educated. They are all paid the London Living Wage and above. These staff work alongside parents, who take on roles at the nursery in return for a discount on their fees. Parents are involved in the management and organisation of the co-op. What makes parent-led childcare different is that they also do shifts in the classroom, working alongside the staff to look after the children. Parents get £120 per month discount in exchange for doing one shift per week.   

This is Grasshoppers in the Park and it has been running for 14 years. The nursery has come a long way from its beginnings as a group of parents looking after each other’s kids in their own homes to its current status as a fully-fledged nursery with a ‘Good’ rating from Ofsted and a waiting list of 20 families.

The benefits of this kind of parent-led approach to childcare are clear. It gives parents more control over the cost of their childcare, how it fits with their working lives, and the kind of education their child receives. And it can help end the frustration of having to choose between working long hours to pay for expensive childcare and staying at home full time. With this model, parents can afford to work part-time as well as have the chance to be more involved in their child’s education.

“Where can I find a parent-led nursery?” I hear you ask.

This kind of childcare does exist in the UK but it is few and far between. In contrast over 500 such parent co-ops already make up 12% of New Zealand’s childcare provision, while in Sweden over 20,000 children are cared for in this way. The New Economics Foundation is working with the Family and Childcare Trust and the Young Women’s Trust to raise the profile of this type of childcare in order to make it a genuine option for more families. Starting in London, where the cost is biting hardest, they will be rolling out pilot schemes with families with low incomes in early 2017. Watch this space.

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According to latest YouGov polling, more than one in four of us are working longer hours than we want to. The UK tops the European long hours league, and research published by the TUC last year revealed that the number of people working over 48 hours a week has increased by 15% since 2010.

This culture of overwork is bad for us; for our health, for our relationships, for our communities. Numerous studies have documented the adverse effects of long working hours on our health, with overwork linked to heavy drinking, impaired sleep, depressive symptoms and heart disease.

Overwork has also been linked to the rise of the ‘precariat’: workers in low-end jobs with zero-hours contracts, insulting pay and little security. Many of these jobs are found in industries which thrive on the over-busyness of other workers; delivering them food (Deliveroo), driving them around (Uber) and fixing things around the house (TaskRabbit). Many precarious workers have to do two or three jobs just to make ends meet. So they are under heavy pressures too, often torn between poverty and an intolerable work-life balance.

We have lost control of our working lives. But a dysfunctional labour market is far from inevitable. Around the world, increasing numbers are bucking this trend of overwork, insecurity and low wages, and are instead recognising the value of a shorter working week and the benefits it can bring to our communities, our societies and our economies.

In Sweden, employers across the country are moving to a six-hour working day to improve productivity and staff wellbeing. Toyota centres in Gothenberg, Sweden’s second largest city, made the switch thirteen years ago, and the company has since reported higher productivity, with mechanics producing, in 30 hours of work, 114% of what they used to produce in 40 hours.

A nursing home in the same city has switched from an eight to six hour work day- with nurses retaining the same wage- in a bid to tackle levels of depression and exhaustion amongst the care staff. The trial is proving a success. Nurses working shorter days take half as much sick leave as those in the control group, there have been marked improvements in staff wellbeing and quality of care and staff turnover has fallen.

The shift towards shorter, more flexible working arrangements is not confined to Sweden. An increasing number of start-ups, from Merseyside to Utah have been trialling shorter working arrangements with great success. Earlier this year, staff at the Glasgow-based firm Pursuit Marketing moved to a four day week whilst retaining the same pay, and since the shift the firm has seen a 30% increase in productivity and a dramatic fall in sickness absence.

Clearly, a shorter working week could drastically improve the quality of our work and our quality of life, both within and outside of the workplace. So how can we make it happen? How do we give control back to the individuals and families who need it most?

The move to shortening the work week needs to be gradual, with a minimal impact on pay. New entrants to the labour market could start on a 30-hour week, while workers over 50 could take a one hour cut in their working week each year, reaching a 30-hour week at 60 and 20-hour week at 70. At annual pay negotiations, workers could be offered the opportunity to trade a bit of time each year for a smaller pay rise.

To enable everyone, particularly those stuck working long hours because of inadequate pay, to work fewer hours, a shorter working week must go hand in hand with a higher minimum wage, more generous child benefit and a more secure ‘social income’ in terms of high-quality services that are collectively funded and provided.

Research from the New Economics Foundation has extensively documented the social, environmental and economic benefits a shorter working week could bring. A world with a standard working week of 30 hours or less would be one in which we all have more time – to care for one another, to be active members of our communities and to participate in democracy. With more time, we could lead more sustainable lives, cooking and growing our own food and moving away from the carbon-intensive, fast-paced lifestyles that are today’s norm. With a decrease in overwork, caring responsibilities could be more evenly divided between genders, challenging gender norms and leading to more equal workplaces and a shrinking pay gap.

Across the world, people are showing us that a shorter working week is not just a utopian dream, but a real, practical possibility for a better life, one in which we are less stressed, less anxious and have more control over our lives.

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