VACATION CARE HELPS FILL GAP FOR PARENTS AT WORK

MORE parents are taking leave from their job to look after their children during school holidays.

Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show a parent taking leave accounted for 26 per cent of all children’s care during the surveyed school holiday period in 2017, up from 25 per cent in 2014.

It was the most common option for working parents, followed by care provided by grandparents, which recorded a slight decline from 19.2 per cent to 19 per cent in the same period.

However, the proportion of children in vacation care also grew from 8 per cent to 10 per cent.

It includes employerprovided programs, which are offered by some organisations to help parents provide care, especially when not enough leave is accrued to cover all the school holiday weeks of the year, or taking unpaid leave is not financially suitable.

Carsales chief people officer Jo Allan says leaders at the automotive website understand juggling work and home commitments can get tricky for staff, especially during school holidays.

The company provides its school holiday program as a subsidised childcare solution.

“Our most recent five-day school holiday program was delivered by an external provider and designed by teachers to include the fundamental areas of learning, which were a mix of sport, arts, music, science and technology activities,” she says.

“As innovation is at the core of the carsales culture, we ran our first Kids Coding Camp this January as part of our school holiday offering.

“Participants took part in an array of activities, which included programming concepts using robotic games, and heard from tech experts in a fun, supportive and interactive environment.”

SEEK Laws of Attraction research finds that on-site childcare is not a prime motivator for workers when looking for a new employer, however, work/life balance ranks second after salary/ compensation.