Childcare Support Needed For Policing Families

Police officers with young families need more childcare support, the Chair of Hampshire Police Federation has said, adding that it has been a problem for “years and years”.

A desperate lack of childcare – particularly in wraparound hours – is making it difficult for police officers to return to work if they don’t have family support, Zoë Wakefield said.

Zoë said she only managed to cope when her children were young because her husband worked nine to five, and could cover her night and weekend shifts. But she said many couples both worked in the police and had to work opposite shift patterns, limiting their time together as a family.

A new Oscar Kilo report, ‘Police Families’ Wellbeing and Support Needs’, found that childcare’s incompatibility with police shift work had a significant impact on the practical and emotional wellbeing of families. It concluded that “serious consideration should be given to the provision of childcare for police officers. Consideration should be made of in-house provision, emergency arrangements and police-specific agreements with third-party childcare providers, potentially nationally.”

Zoë said: “This is definitely needed, and it’s been needed for years and years. I’ve done some work through the Federation looking at childcare provision around the Hampshire area, and childcare on a late shift is very, very scarce. Childcare for a night shift doesn’t exist. It’s absolutely impossible.

“For police officers who want to come back to work days, lates and nights, the only option is family support. Some officers don’t have that.

“Being close to Portsmouth and the military and the navy, we’ve got a lot of people that have moved down here with their other halves, but they’re navy and they don’t have any other family support around. Or we’ve got single parents who would love to be able to work lates or nights but there’s just no option because there is no childcare.

“I don’t think any force could afford to pay for this themselves, but the provision just isn’t there anyway. There’s lots of childcare chains out there now, but 6pm is the latest you can leave your child there. It’s really tricky.

“I would love to see one of the big childcare providers work nationally with police forces to provide childcare until 11pm. It would be absolutely amazing if that was achieved and it would make such a difference to police officers being able to come and do more of those later shifts. Most people want to do it, it’s just they can’t.”