‘Looking after the kids over the summer holidays will cost me close to £2.5k

Parents have spoken about the struggle they face each summer holiday as they are forced to balance thousands of pounds in childcare costs and taking time off work to look after their children.

Tobi Asare, a 35-year-old senior media agency executive from Surrey, says I that she and her husband will spend almost £2,500 on four weeks of childcare for their six-year-old son and four-year-old daughter.

Her son will attend clubs for four weeks, costing more than £1,200, and her daughter will go to pre-school – costing a similar amount – before starting reception in September, forcing Mrs Asare and her husband to take a week off at the beginning and end of the holidays.

“We had to weigh up the cost of the holiday against the cost of more clubs and we felt that actually with the cost versus the time and memories we would have with the kids, it made more sense to try and take some time off,” she said.

Research carried out by children’s charity Coram found that parents can expect to spend £1,049 per child aged four to 14 on childcare over the summer holidays.

Ms Asare called for employers to offer more flexible working arrangements where possible to make life easier for parents, suggesting it should be common to be able to buy more annual leave, work reduced hours and work from home more regularly.

She also runs the online platform My Bump Pay, which advises parents on how to successfully balance family and career. She advises families struggling with childcare over the holidays to look for local community groups on social media that can offer suggestions for clubs and activities, and to check with their employers to see if they have a corporate partnership with a nanny agency that may result in a discount.

Parents are also eligible for tax-free childcare, which provides up to £2,000 per year per child towards childcare costs. This increases to £4,000 per year if the child has a disability. The cost of childcare increases significantly for children with additional needs.

Emily Beckloff, 53, who runs a business called International Elf Service from her home in London, has a 13-year-old son who has Down’s syndrome and cannot go to a summer holiday club.

She says I that vacations are a “nightmare” because “I really need to work all the hours God sends.”

“My business is very seasonal, so summer break is when I need to work even harder. That’s when my season starts,” she adds.

This summer, she is hiring a one-to-one nanny to look after her son for 10 seven-hour days spread over two weeks, costing £15 an hour or £1,050 in total.

If she did this for the entire summer holidays, the cost would come to £3,150.

“I have no qualms about paying the person who comes to take care of him. I think she deserves that money and more, but it’s just a question of how much we can afford,” she says.

She wishes there was some kind of club her son could join on vacation, “but the nature of having a child with special needs is that they can’t always take advantage of everything that’s on offer. It’s not like having a child where you can send them to sports camp.”

She adds that it can be harder for her to work with one-on-one childcare because if the person coming in is sick one day, “that’s your day lost. You become more dependent and your childcare is more fragile.”

Some parents have changed their entire working patterns to avoid the cost of holiday childcare. Jodie Lopez, a 45-year-old freelance education technology consultant based in Nottingham, works double shifts before each school holiday so she can take time out to spend with her seven- and 10-year-old children.

“I cram a lot of things into the school term,” she says. I, “I just work on everything, whether it’s long nights (sometimes I’m up until 2am), Saturday and Sunday mornings, which means I get to spend pretty much every holiday with them.

“July is a really busy month,” she adds, saying that “I basically have to say yes to every job I can.” While she finds herself in a similar situation before other school holidays, the amount of free time she needs in the summer makes it her busiest time.

She says it was the cost of childcare that led her to become a freelancer and work this way. When she became pregnant with her second child, she and her husband realized that to afford childcare, they would have to “work constantly” and put their kids in daycare “from 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., which would take all of our pay anyway.”

Or they thought, “We move away from London, we change our lifestyle and I end up becoming a freelancer so I can make things work in a way that I don’t have to pay ridiculous amounts of money.”

Sam Kennedy Christian, a 38-year-old parenting coach who lives in Kent, also has to work during the school holidays to look after her one-year-old son and six-year-old daughter.

“I definitely can’t work the same way” during the summer holidays, he says. Iadding that “it’s nice to have the flexibility of running my own business, but I can’t just take annual leave.”

She needs to take into account in her work planning for the year how many days she will have to take off and step on the gas before the holidays to be able to get more done.

Mrs Kennedy Christian knows this is a concern for many parents she works with and was recently contacted by a client who is expecting her first child but is already wondering how she will manage the school holidays.

“It’s on people’s minds when they’re on maternity leave or when they have babies, and they’re not even juggling that yet. It means women, especially, are putting the brakes on their careers and making decisions to make them work. It has such a big impact,” she says.

Since April this year, parents in England are now entitled to 15 hours of free childcare per week for their two-year-olds. From September, working parents in England can get 15 hours of funded childcare for nine-month-olds, while 30 hours of free childcare is already available for three- and four-year-olds.

The UK government has promised 30 hours of free childcare for all children under five from September 2025 and hopes the scheme will encourage more parents to return to work.

Commenting on Coram’s holiday childcare research, Ellen Broomé, the company’s managing director, said: “Many families dread the start of the summer holidays. Instead of a time for families to rest, play and have fun together, many parents are left worrying about how to pay for holiday childcare during the long summer break.

“And with a growing shortage of available childcare, finding a spot will be a challenge this summer, especially for children with special educational needs and disabilities (Submit).”

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “Too often, childcare is unavailable or inaccessible, especially for disadvantaged children or those with additional needs – and we are determined to rebuild opportunities for every child.

“Local authorities are expected to offer the equivalent of six weeks of holiday activities and feeding programme, which provides free meals, activities and childcare places for children from low-income families.”