Day care

-WARNING- This post may turn into a little bit of a rant, but stick with me.

Over the last few months, my wife has very diligently been going to various day care options around Leeds, turning up unannounced with Jake in tow to see what's going on. She finally found one that she liked and we went to visit last week. What I saw was a well run operation, running out of a two storey building. The first floor is for babies and has one large room split into three different sections and two smaller rooms, one for sleeping, one that acts as a multi-sensory room. When we went, the main room had three workers and five children who were sat in various positions singing songs. The rest of the area looked very much like a large living room with toys and play areas. The multi-sensory room has some fairy lights, a disco ball and lots of things to play with. On the whole, it feels like somewhere that I would be happy to leave Jake for the day as we both got good vibes from the workers.

All well and good so far, until you start to talk about money. This is one of the cheaper options for daycare that my wife found and they still charge a whopping £40 a day. For five days a week, this would work out at £800 a month. Fortunately this day care allows you to choose a term time only contract, so we only pay for the 39 weeks that I'm at work. However, this still comes to over £500 a month which is more than our monthly mortgage payment. They also expect you to pay a £100 registration fee to assure your child a place.

For the majority of people in the UK, where the average annual salary is around £22k, this is an enormous expense. My wife's paid maternity leave runs out in January and even if I was earning my previous wage, there would be no way that we could afford for her to be a stay at home mother. Our only other option, therefore, is to put Jake in day care, which leaves us only marginally better off each month. I just find it incredible that in a time when the government wants people back in work, in particularly women, that there is no help available (bar the £80 a week we get for child benefit) to help make ends meet. Fortunately, we have saved up for this eventuality but still it sticks in my craw that the options are so limited.

I guess it's a problem of our own making, so to speak, but it's not something we had fully considered when we made the choice to get pregnant. We've now signed up and Jake is due to start at some point in the new year, so watch this space for updates.