Melted Parents: The childcare crisis enveloping Northern Ireland

The spiraling cost of childcare in Northern Ireland is "compounding parental guilt" and leaving some parents with "suicidal thoughts," according to campaign group Melted Parents.

Mums Casey McGivern and Becca Harper told UTV they were "melted by the whole situation" around childcare provision.

Speaking on the latest episode of the UTV Podcast with Carol Jordan, Casey said: "The crushing cost of childcare is astronomical and people don't always recognise that until they start having children."

She said the group welcomed support from the Chancellor for families in England to extend childcare provision for all children up to five, but said "it's a hard pill to swallow" for those in Northern Ireland as it has not been extended to the country.

"The thing that makes it the hardest," she said, "is that Northern Ireland is receiving funding for this help and for some reason it's not trickling down to the people that it's intended to help.

So that's really one of the main gripes we had at the beginning of all of this."

Becca explained why she started the campaign: "We're really aware that across Northern Ireland, through politicians, through charities, through other sort of campaigners there's been amazing work in the last decade really about childcare reform, but for us as mummies who were chatting, we just felt the missing piece was that human voice, those powerful parent stories behind the statistics."

Casey outlined the reality many parents are facing in Northern Ireland.

"At one of the scale you have families that are basically working to sacrifice one parent's salary.

"At the other end you have folks who say childcare is just inaccessible to us because it's so expensive.

"So one of us leaves the workplace and then you have this mishmash in the middle which a lot of families are doing, they're relying on grandparents, they're mixing and matching their childcare, they're stressing about summer holidays and how they're going to make that work between two parents.

"Some folks are doing it and talking about the fact they have to sacrifice full parent salary if they're lucky enough to have a two parent household."

It's not just the financial strain that's taking its toll, but also the mental strain as Becca revealed that "a couple of parents actually got in touch with us and said 'It's brought suicidal thoughts to our family, the cost of childcare and the burden it is'."

Casey added: "Families feed off each other, they bounce off each other, if parents are struggling, if they are stressed, how can children not experience that within the home?

"We've heard from parents who are saying to us, 'I've had to leave the work place, my mental health has suffered, I know I would be better if I was in work and I feel bad for my children as well'.

"And it's compounding parental guilt around having to carry this stress, but it's not their guilt to carry, they've been failed by our government but little people really do deserve to be acknowledged."

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