More Support Needed To Help Officers Cover Childcare Costs

Creating a Blue Light Card-type scheme for childcare could help police officers mitigate “extraordinary” costs they are facing, South Yorkshire Police Federation suggested.

Federation Chair Steve Kent said there needed to be more flexibility with police officers’ shifts so they could better manage their family.

He said: “Some officers are spending a third of their wages on childcare alone, which is just unacceptable”.

His comments came after an Oscar Kilo report determined “serious consideration” should be given to childcare provision for police.

Steve said favouring common sense over a hardline approach by empowering local managers would act as an immediate improvement.

He added: “Sometimes we see that two officers have children together and the force will say, ‘No, you can’t adjust your shifts’.

“What that means is those cops have got to pay extraordinary amounts of money for childcare, when probably all it needs is a supervisor or manager to say, ‘No, let’s be flexible’.

“That, for me, needs to be instilled in supervisors and managers more, to have those common sense solutions.”

Steve said there should be a discount or extra Government support that helps officers to cover childcare costs.

He suggested a Blue Light Card scheme for childcare could go some way in mitigating the problem.

The Federation Chair added: “The working hours of cops are not the same where you can just solve the problem with a breakfast club and an after-school activities club”.

However, he said forces had to be “realistic” about the issue as, at the moment, they were “struggling to even provide counselling assistance and physio to support officers”.

He said: “It’s a trouble to see where we’re necessarily going to start looking at this.”