Sandra Russell

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Helping Children Cope with Returning to Work after Divorce?

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This is part 4 of a series of posts by Sandra Russell on how to get back to work after divorce.  You can read part 1 – Why Stay-At-Home Parents Are Advised To Go Back To Work After Divorce and part 2 here – How To Find Your Preferred Working Pattern and part 3 – Where to look for the Type of Work you Want

Sandra Russell Heads of Graysons’ Family Team

Sandra Russell
Head of
Graysons’ Family Team

 

Divorce is already a time of huge upheaval for your children, one that requires its own unique protective strategies.

The impact will depend on their age and level of understanding.

Adding to this your return to work – particularly if you’ve been the main caregiver – and you will need some tactics in place to mitigate the extra effects and maintain stability for them.

Think about drafting up a parenting plan so that you and your ex can help your kids feel more secure and confident.

We take some common pain points for divorced and newly-working parents and suggest workarounds:

The School Run:

  • Always make sure your children know who is picking them up and when, especially when your ex is involved. Make a rota and stick to it.
  • Consider asking your employer for a start time to fit around the morning drop-off. It’s the more rigid timing of the two runs, since afterschool clubs can always accommodate your work-related absence later in the day.
  • Co-ordinate with other local parents: can they pick up your kids on set days, in exchange for you babysitting or hosting playdates on your free days?

returning to work after divorceMealtimes:

  • Always batch cook and freeze ahead. Your kids’ mental health may suffer during your divorce – so their appetites may be affected. Fall back on fail-safe favourites (as long as they’re healthy) that you know they’ll eat, and make double or triple the quantity for days when you’re out working and don’t have time to cook it fresh.
  • Plan your meals and agree a rota with your ex. This ensures your children get a varied, healthy diet, no matter which parent they’re with. It also cuts down on ‘what shall we eat’ panics: if you know what you’re cooking and when, you can always stock for the right ingredients. This reduces the chance of emergency unhealthy takeaways.
  • Consider a delivery service. There are plenty of companies running services to deliver fresh, healthy meals, or the exact ingredients to cook them up.
  • Do your grocery shopping online, and get it delivered. Now you’re back at work, do you have a spare couple of hours to run around the supermarket, solo, with your kids? Cut out the stress, order your shop online in your lunch break and get it delivered for a time that suits you.

Other activities:

  • Similar to the school run, co-ordinate responsibility for out of school activities with your ex. Make sure your children can carry on doing all the clubs and sports they did before both your divorce and your return to work. This will give them consistency throughout this transitional period.
  • Routine is good – but you can still do surprises. If you’re sharing residency or just contact with your ex, a new job can give you another life outside of caregiving. Surprisingly, work can be a welcome break for many divorced parents. Use the change in pace to bring the best version of your parenting self and throw in the odd spontaneous treat.

What to Consider if you have Pre-school Children

Divorce and pre-school kids: that’s a stressful situation! This is one of the most intense and difficult periods of childhood – for them and for you.

Add in the logistics of either sharing access or solo parenting plus a return to work, and it’s a perfect storm.

Depending on the age of your pre-schooler, you’ll need to consider childcare options when you return to work. If you’re working freelance at home, will you have them at home or have them looked after by family, nursery or a childminder?

Can your ex take them? If you’re working outside the home, who will look after them, and can you afford the fees?

Remember that in England, you currently get 15 hours free childcare a week per child from the term after they turn 3. The Government plans to extend this to 30 hours, but it won’t hit many areas until 2017 (unless you live in one of the pilot areas, where the increased hours may be available in 2016).

What to consider if you have school-age children

Returning to work when your kids are at school means two things: the school run, and time to work while they’re not there: a double-edged sword.

It’s a good idea to investigate after-school clubs and what other working parents do at your school. Can you take turns for after-school care? Can family or your ex help with either the school run or after-school care?

Sandra heads Graysons’ family team.  She qualified as a solicitor in April 1994, having obtained her law degree at Sheffield University. She has specialised exclusively in family law ever since.

She is personally recommended in the Legal 500 2015 as being ‘committed, focused and confident’.

Sandra became a Resolution accredited specialist in January 2000 and qualified as a collaborative family lawyer in April 2009.  Her accredited areas are advanced complex financial and property matters and domestic abuse.

Sandra is passionate about helping couples to resolve their disputes in a non-adversarial, respectful manner; focusing on the needs of their children and re-enforcing the importance of conflict avoidance.  She finds collaborative work particularly rewarding in guiding clients through their individual separation journeys so they can look towards a brighter future.

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Where to Look for the Type of Work you Want

Published on

This is part 3 of a series of posts by Sandra Russell on how to get back to work after divorce.  You can read part 1 – Why Stay-At-Home Parents Are Advised To Go Back To Work After Divorce and part 2 here – How To Find Your Preferred Working Pattern.

Sandra Russell Heads of Graysons’ Family Team
Sandra Russell
Head of
Graysons’ Family Team

Freelance: If you have skills that are in demand, try approaching past employers, or asking friends and family if their employers are in need of freelancers to handle overflow, or have skills gaps that you could fill.

There are also a huge number of freelance job boards out there for you to tap into.

If these avenues turn up nothing, why not think of networking at local events and council-funded employer events? A great source could be your local Chamber of Commerce.

Check out your local council website for information on business advice. Since you’ll be self-employed as a freelancer, much advice for sole traders can be applied to you and your business growth, including how to source clients and build professional networks.

Never forget to use LinkedIn, either!

Part-time: A number of specialist job boards and recruitment agencies have sprung up to cater for part-time jobseekers. Our pick of the bunch are:

Increasingly, regular job sites are becoming more useful if you’re looking for a flexible position. You can either search within the part-time category, or use it as an extra keyword to search for matching jobs in your industry and location.

It’s also handy to set up job alerts for the part-time sections on each job website, which will then send you an automated email every time a new role comes up that meets your criteria.  Indeed is an excellent tool for this – as a major jobs aggregator, it pulls in jobs from many other advertisers.

Term-time: With the education sector being your best option for a term-time job, try these:

Do you Need to Retrain to find Family-friendly Work?

Going through a divorce goes hand in hand with rediscovering yourself again. This may mean deciding on a new career path. Were you unhappy when you were last working, or have you discovered a new passion that you’d like to explore? Now is the time to forge the new you, especially if that means finding a different working path.

Think about ways you could combine skills from your previous career, or your interests, with a new job that suits you as a single parent. Not sure what job to do? Try out some career quizzes to uncover where your strengths and interests lie.

If you’ve found that you want to change direction for work, but you’re not sure what to do to get into that new job, check out the National Careers Advice site.

It has detailed profiles of hundreds of different job types, from the salary you can expect, to the qualifications you’ll need and where to find the right training courses in your area – and even if there’s funding available to you. There’s useful tools like a skills health checker, an action planner and CV builder.

About Sandra Russell

Sandra heads Graysons’ family team.  She qualified as a solicitor in April 1994, having obtained her law degree at Sheffield University. She has specialised exclusively in family law ever since.

She is personally recommended in the Legal 500 2015 as being ‘committed, focused and confident’.

Sandra became a Resolution accredited specialist in January 2000 and qualified as a collaborative family lawyer in April 2009.  Her accredited areas are advanced complex financial and property matters and domestic abuse.

Sandra is passionate about helping couples to resolve their disputes in a non-adversarial, respectful manner; focusing on the needs of their children and re-enforcing the importance of conflict avoidance.  She finds collaborative work particularly rewarding in guiding clients through their individual separation journeys so they can look towards a brighter future.

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Getting Back to Work after Divorce

Getting Back to Work after Divorce – How to Find your Preferred Working Pattern.

Published on
Sandra Russell Heads of Graysons’ Family Team
Sandra Russell
Head of
Graysons’ Family Team

This is part 2 of a series of posts by Sandra Russell on how to get back to work after divorce.  You can read part 1 – Why Stay-At-Home Parents Are Advised To Go Back To Work After Divorce

Freelance work: The sky really is the limit here. There are few industries that don’t use freelancers, since they are often cheaper and more convenient than employing someone in house.

Start by defining your target market, then simply approach the ones you think would be a good fit for you and your skills. There is no right or wrong type of employer to target, as long as they feasibly have a need for the skills you can offer.

It’s worth noting, however, that with the growth in social media, there are often opportunities for freelance digital experts in this area.

Part-time: Look for companies where there is already a precedent of part-time work. Avoid employers in very high-pressure or fast-moving sectors, where there’s a culture of excess overtime and a high turnover of staff, which may indicate that part-time work would be unsustainable.

According to Mumandcareer, the top industries for part-time jobs are education, medical and admin.

Full-time: Really, any employers. A full-time work pattern is the easiest type of work to request.

Term-time: Schools, universities and colleges. The education sector is the obvious choice for term-time jobs – whether you want to work as support staff, or as a teaching assistant.

Who are the Best Family-friendly Employers in the UK?

There are many initiatives and awards for employers who are family friendly – and these kinds of policies can work to your advantage as a single divorced parent.

If you’re a working mum, take a look at these top employers from Working Mums. Featured on the list are:

  • BBC
  • Royal Mail
  • John Lewis
  • National Offender Management Service
  • Vodafone
  • Lloyds Banking Group
  • Barclays
  • Network Rail
  • Unilever

…and many more.

The Times top 50 Employers for Women features employers like:

  • Asda
  • BT Group plc
  • Genesis Housing Association
  • HM Revenue and Customs
  • Home Office
  • Marks & Spencer
  • National Grid
  • Post Office Ltd
  • PwC
  • State Street

Flexible working isn’t just for divorced mothers though. Divorced stay-at-home dads who want to combine time with their kids with returning to work should target some of the top employers for working families, awarded by the charity Working Families. In particular, the Cityfathers Best for All Stages of Fatherhood Award showed that these employers are a great place to start:

  • The London School of Economics & Political Science
  • West Dunbartonshire Council
  • iCrossing
  • Scottish Parliament
  • National Grid

Sandra heads Graysons’ family team.  She qualified as a solicitor in April 1994, having obtained her law degree at Sheffield University. She has specialised exclusively in family law ever since.

She is personally recommended in the Legal 500 2015 as being ‘committed, focused and confident’.

Sandra became a Resolution accredited specialist in January 2000 and qualified as a collaborative family lawyer in April 2009.  Her accredited areas are advanced complex financial and property matters and domestic abuse.

Sandra is passionate about helping couples to resolve their disputes in a non-adversarial, respectful manner; focusing on the needs of their children and re-enforcing the importance of conflict avoidance.  She finds collaborative work particularly rewarding in guiding clients through their individual separation journeys so they can look towards a brighter future.

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Returning to work Post-divorce: Why Stay-at-home Parents are Advised to go Back to Work after Divorce

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Sandra Russell Heads of Graysons’ Family Team
Sandra Russell
Head of
Graysons’ Family Team

As we’ve explored before, it’s now pretty rare for a stay-at-home parent to receive spousal support for life.

A decade or a few years is the best case scenario, now. Family court judges will expect both parties to contribute financially to their children’s upbringing – so how are you going to do this?

If you stopped working to bring up your children, it’s likely that you’ll need to supplement your income beyond that of any spousal support and child maintenance payments arranged in your financial settlement.

You may need to prepare a steady income stream in anticipation of the day when spousal support from your ex will end – so enabling you to become fully financially independent. This is why returning to work may be something you need to do.

But how do you find work that will fit around looking after your children?

Whether you are the resident parent or the non-resident parent, finding and keeping a job that works with your family arrangements can be another tough aspect of divorce.

What are the different types of working patterns available to you?

The amount of hours you may want or need to work will of course depend on your contact and residence arrangements with your ex, the age of your children, and what other childcare options are available to you (for example, nursery and childminders, or family). Your ex may have your children at weekends, or even half of the week, so this may dictate what kind of work pattern that will best suit your situation. Think about some of the hours you could work:

  • Freelance

Pros: This can be a great option if you previously worked in industries where there is demand for self-employed workers, such as the creative and technical professions, or if you can provide consultancy in your previous field of expertise. Being freelance often means that you can work at home too, which is ideal if you have small children or need to make the school run. It’s handy for keeping on top of your domestic chores too.

Cons: There are two main difficulties with the freelance market. The first is that it can be difficult to drum up the business from your clients if you have been out of the work network for a while.

The second is that, unless you can agree set freelance contracts, it can be very unpredictable and precarious: both in workload and in income. You may work just a few days a month or be up to your eyes.

This can make any financial planning problematic, especially if an unexpected expense comes up. It also makes holidays – both your own, and the school breaks – difficult, if you suddenly have to pause work with your clients.

  • Part time

Pros: Working part-time is probably the Holy Grail for any working parent, divorced or not! You get to have a structure to your week, socialise with colleagues, earn your own money, get a sense of achievement, and time to spend with your kids as well.

Returning to work Post-divorce smallA part-time pattern can work well if you split your children’s residence with your ex, since it allows you to work when your children are with them, giving you some time off from childcare and a life of your own outside the kids.

You can also arrange to work every day within school hours, so you’re home when you need to be.

Cons: Part-time positions are thin on the ground in many areas of the country, as competition is high from other working parents.

Sometimes you can feel that you are neither one thing nor the other, and stretched too thinly as both an employee and a parent. Some companies might try to squeeze a full-time workload into your part-time hours, so it could be stressful. You may miss important developments on the days you’re not in the office.

  • Full time

Pros: You can fully throw yourself back into a career and demonstrate your commitment to your new employers. Full time work is definitely easier to find than a part-time job. And of course, you earn more money too!

Cons: Going from being a stay-at-home parent to full-time work can be a shock. If you’ve used your stay-at-home time to keep a spotless house and a week’s menu of nutritious food served up on time every night, this is likely to slip.

Working full time can also be difficult if you need to do the school run, so it’s better suited to those with older children or family who can help out.

  • Term-time only

Pros: School holidays can be a minefield for divorced parents, with three sets of holiday to co-ordinate: yours, your ex’s and your kids! Working term-time only means that you always have the holidays free to look after your children, no matter whether your ex can take them.

Cons: Term-time work is often unique to the education sector, so you’ll need to have the right transferrable skills. And because you already get set holidays, you can’t really take any other time off: not great if arrangements with your ex suddenly fall through.

Sandra heads Graysons’ family team.  She qualified as a solicitor in April 1994, having obtained her law degree at Sheffield University. She has specialised exclusively in family law ever since.

She is personally recommended in the Legal 500 2015 as being ‘committed, focused and confident’.

Sandra became a Resolution accredited specialist in January 2000 and qualified as a collaborative family lawyer in April 2009.  Her accredited areas are advanced complex financial and property matters and domestic abuse.

Sandra is passionate about helping couples to resolve their disputes in a non-adversarial, respectful manner; focusing on the needs of their children and re-enforcing the importance of conflict avoidance.  She finds collaborative work particularly rewarding in guiding clients through their individual separation journeys so they can look towards a brighter future.

 

 

photo credit: Woman and young girl in kitchen with laptop and paperwork smiling via photopin (license)

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