Childcare / After school clubs

[trazy]

In the process of filling out my I&E and was wondering if anyone had any advice on my childcare situation.

Basically our debt has been building over a number of years but it all came to a head this summer as my childminders circumstances changed (completely beyond her control) which meant she could no longer collect our son from school - we tried to find an alternative but they were all full.

I then tried to change my hours at work to accommodate extra school pick-ups (they said no!) so I had to hand in my notice and although I was very lucky to find a new job with better hours, it is less pay and therefore we are now in need of an IVA (although honestly we have been struggling for a while so this was really just the tipping point!)

Anyways (sorry for rambling!) my new job allows me quite a lot of flexibility in regards to my hours and I can also work from home but... school hours and evenings alone are not enough to get all my work hours done (i'm contracted to 37.5 hours). I have found some after school clubs (swimming, drama, cubs/woodcraft) which are reasonably priced and would allow me the extra hours I need to work.

Our childminder cost about £3.50 an hour while some of the clubs are going to be more like £7 an hour - but as there is a severe lack of childminders in our area I really don't know what else I can do.

Does anyone know if I would I be able to count this as childcare - as it is not your traditional childminder/nursery set-up?

Thank you for taking the time to read all of this!

[Foggy]

To be honest I doubt it, but you can try to make this up by taking advantage of other categories here and there and going to a sympathetic firm (avoid the IVA factories and charity firms).

[trazy]

Hmm.. I did think that may be the case.

The annoying thing is that we were paying the childminder £220 a month while the clubs are only going to be about £100 a month (I have all my old invoices so I may send them in as an example of what the alternative is!)

If worst comes to worst I will just have to do my work late at night/early in the morning while my son is asleep and keep our fingers crossed that one of the childminders has a space open up (we are on 4 different waiting lists!!) but I can't think of any long term solutions without the clubs