The case of Leanne Shepherd and Lucy Jarrett – the job-sharing police constables whose child-minding arrangements have become a matter of some controversy* – rightly enrages all sensible folk.
To recap: the two women are best friends and share a job, each working 20 hours a week. Their husbands, also policemen, work irregular shifts. Their daughters are essentially the same age. And also friends. So it makes a good deal of sense for them to pool resources and arrange for whichever woman isn’t working to look after both children. I dare say there are many women who had as convenient and elegant a solution to the child-care problem as that.
But not Ofsted who accuse the pair of running “an illegal child-minding business”. Because, apparently looking after a friend’s kid constitutes a “reward” and that, whaddyaknow, they need to be “registered” with Ofsted and, presumably, subject to a litany of generally pointless regulations.
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