I was listening to a debate about summer childcare on the radio yesterday. It was all about how families across the nation are breaking out in cold sweats at the prospect of long summer holidays. Parents are taking annual leave at different times to cover a longer stretch, or asking grandparents to step into the breach. Meanwhile other people are dipping into savings to meet the cost of holiday clubs.

It made me think. What if you are a single parent without the support of a co-parent? What if you have no family who can help? What if the cost of childcare is just another thing that pushes your household further into debt?

I am Sian, mother of one primary school aged boy (6). I do not have the support of a co-parent and do not have family who are in a position to help with childcare. I work part-time so that I have the flexibility to cope with all the regular days off sick, school holidays and lack of after school club availability. Not to mention the unplanned extra days – like when the school was used as a polling station recently! (I genuinely wept as I cleared my diary of all work meetings on the 4th July 2024).

Now it’s August. And I’m counting down the days to September and him being back in the classroom. I only have one child. Any more, and I think I would stand a better chance of solving a Rubik’s cube than figuring out the puzzle that is ‘summer holiday childcare’!

Even with just one child it’s still a military operation. I’m new to our area but could write the local guide to all the holiday clubs. What they charge, whether they cover the hours of a full working day and whether they are able to accept tax free childcare codes.

And so, I have a plan. It took me weeks to get to this point, hours of research and a bucket load of emotional energy. I see the ‘Year 1 Parent’s’ Whatsapp group pinging with just days to go before the holidays hit. Some are only now asking each other about everyone’s arrangements, which child might be going to which holiday clubs and when. And there was me, signed up to every newsletter and enrolled into our holiday club over a month back, quicker than you can say ‘early bird discount’!

There was no picking and choosing for us. We are going for the cheapest option, a charity run sports camp connected with some local sports teams. I am breaking it up with a couple of weeks of cat sitting at a friend’s on the coast. I will take a few days off there, that’s our holiday. I can ‘work from home’ though and have discovered a children’s football camp at £15 a day. It’s an offer too good to miss, and a way of saving some of my leave to cope with the rest of the school year.

The football camp ends at 3pm so I can’t work full days. I have ‘smoothed’ my hours across one of those weeks. Colleagues trying to make sense of my Outlook calendar might experience some secondary stress, I have already warned them.

I feel for 6. I wish he could be at the expensive holiday clubs with his friends. But with the cost of 6 weeks of packed lunches and then the petrol to get to our cat sitting gig, it felt too much of a stretch. It near broke my heart when he came home from school hopefully brandishing a flyer for one that came to £35 a day.

I want to make it up to him. I wish I didn’t carry this worry and hope for a day when I can give us a ‘proper holiday’ and he can see me more relaxed.