Sixth episode of WM People Podcast out

The sixth WM People podcast is out and features a discussion of alternative forms of childcare, fake flexibility and sleep deprivation.

The podcast, hosted by Mandy Garner, editor of workingmums.co.uk and workingwise.co.uk, and Ben Falk, editor of workingdads.co.uk, looks at alternative models of childcare in the wake of the focus on Koru Kids which attracted media attention when it emerged that Rishi Sunak’s wife had shares in it. Koru Kids runs a childminding agency in addition to platform-based flexible childcare and has received a lot of interest from investors and others. It seeks to offer affordable, quality childcare, but like other platform-based models its reach has been mostly limited to urban and wealthier areas.

The podcast also discusses Pebble, a platform that allows parents to book flexible childcare and childcare activities in one place. The podcast discusses such models and others, such as a Swiss loans-based system for spreading the cost of childcare over many years rather than paying it all in the early years of family life. Garner remarks that innovation in childcare is interesting, but that only a Government can ensure national coverage, which means greater investment in care generally.

The podcast then moves on to discuss Careering into Motherhood’s new survey of flexible working and its focus on ‘fake flexibility’, which is where people are granted, say, a move from five to three days a week, but none of their responsibilities are reduced, meaning they have to cram five days work into three or work on their days off for no pay. This is nothing new, say Falk and Garner, and has been happening since flexible working first became a thing, but it is worrying that it continues to be the case when it is clearly unsustainable and exploitative. Garner and Falk talk about the importance of job redesign and why the full-time model does not need to be the gold standard.

Lastly, there is a more light-hearted discussion of the kind of sleep deprivation that parents are all too familiar with, how the shock of the first child makes sleep deprivation hard to handle, how you adapt and how you need to pace yourself because there is little time to recover…ever.

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