Things are in a state of flux at the moment. My wife completed her child minding course in March but then we had to wait for Criminal Records Bureau checks to clear for all three of us before she could take on paying customers. While we were waiting for them my daughter walked out of her job (she was working for the same company as my wife) because they kept putting her on reception while expecting her to do her secretarial work - it's a long story which I won't bore you with now, but within a few weeks she got a job with an electrical contractor as office manager.
My wife resigned when the CRB checks cleared and left the company in July. Since then we've only had a couple of paying customers for a few days each, so money is getting tight. We did have four potential customers, actually four children from two families, but all made other arrangements. We've got a couple more potential customers, but they won't be with us for a couple of months yet.
My daughter's boyfriend (now actually her fiancé - they plan to get married in 2012), left his company too and went into partnership with another solicitor to start a new company dealing with personal injury, industrial injury and industrial disease claims. There are only the two of them in the company so far, and my wife is working as part-time cashier for them. They're moving into premises just around the corner from us.
Meanwhile, our new government has decided 'in principle' to abolish the whole of my office network, pending the results of the spending review which should be complete in September or October. This means there's no definite decision yet, so we haven't been declared redundant, nor is there an early release or retirement scheme in place, but the initial proposal is to repatriate all staff to their parent departments once the decision is made. As most of those departments don't have staff in the regions except in our offices and are all trying to reduce staff numbers themselves, no one knows how this is likely to work. Of course, there's a project group looking at our options and looking at arranging courses in interviewee skills, CV writing, etc. and we're having weekly all-staff meetings to keep us abreast of developments, of which there are few as yet. As quite a lot of staff have had the projects that they were working on cancelled, they're closing them down and don't have a lot to do. Our management are allowing us to go on attachments to help local authorities, charities, etc. on short term projects, while still paying our wages. They'll also consider attachments to private companies, so I'm trying to set one up for myself with my daughter's fiancé's company, as they need an office manager, but can't afford the wages yet. If I can swing it, and they start making some money, they'll offer me a job if I get made redundant or take an early retirement package.
If everything falls into place I might actually come out of this better of than I am now, but it could be the end of the financial year before they close us down. The waiting and the uncertainty is getting everyone down, especially as the government are trying to cut our redundancy and pension entitlements, which could mean a loss of thousands of pounds for some people. But we just have to sit tight and wait for them to make us an offer of some sort. At least we're still getting paid while all this is going on.
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