These are family members, often grandparents, who look after children because parents are unable to do so.
In many ways it is closer to America, where the government stingily but even-handedly pays neither parent to look after children.
Since then the family has depended on Mrs Little securing a placement as a trainee hairdresser to help look after children Malachi, Reegan and Nicole.
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Many children were delighted to have two days off to play but many working parents had to take a day off work to look after children.
The group was set up in response to the Williamson Report, published in 2008, into child protection services, which recommended a better resourced independent service should be set up to look after children on the Child Protection Register.
With budgets squeezed, the local authorities whose responsibility it is to look after children in need are not always quick to do so, or to make sure that housing officers, family doctors and others know they are supposed to as well.
Parents look after their children, with a view to helping them do at least as well as they themselves have done, and grown-up children look after their parents, in the hope that their children will do the same for them one day.
We look after these children as we have been given this responsibility by their parents.
UrbanSitter.com seeks to bring ease to urban parents in need of someone to look after their children.
That would mean men could take time off work to look after their children instead of women.
Other families, particularly in the countryside, cannot afford to look after their children, who are sent to relations.
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Laurent Fabius, who ran against her, publicly asked who would look after her children if she went for the presidency.
Staff at nurseries in England should be allowed to look after more children at once, Schools Minister Elizabeth Truss has urged.
Now, for most families, that freedom requires a job that pays the bills, covers your mortgage, helps you look after your children.
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Local social services say the parents failed to look after their children.
But quitting work to look after the children can mean financial disaster.
Stay-at-home parents who choose to look after their children instead of going to work are being "unfairly" penalised, the Bishop of Exeter has said.
It still felt right that the husband should go out to work and the wife should run the house and look after the children.
Singapore Airlines offers up to 14 days a year for mothers who need time off to look after sick children under the age of 6.
Attempts to make nurseries more affordable by letting staff look after more children at a time may reduce the quality of care, campaigners have said.
Government plans to allow nursery staff and childminders to look after more children have drawn "a huge and angry response" from parents, says a charity.
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In its report "Relative Value", Citizens Advice Scotland said a third of the parents who cannot look after their children struggle because of addiction issues.
Earlier this year the ministers announced plans to allow nurseries and childminders to look after more children, but only if there is a qualified graduate present.
Nurseries and childminders in England are to be allowed to look after more children per adult in an attempt to cut childcare costs and boost standards.
In the past communities came together to look after the children if their parents were not available - so why not have childcare collectives put together by volunteers?
"The public needs to be aware of the discrimination that is shown towards domestic helpers and yet we look after their children, we cook, we clean, " Ms Lestari added.
"I was trying to juggle being a mum and look after two children and a house but also we needed to do so much to get Danny's freedom, " the 38-year-old said.
Her husband has a donkey and a small souvenir stall in Petra, so she stays at home to look after the children, the 20 goats and a small garden sown with bamboo, apricots and grapes.
The new dictionary contains such phrases as "gym rat" - somebody who spends a lot of time exercising - and "daddy track" - a man who gives up his career to look after his children.
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The report said that Mrs A was forced to give up work to look after the children and admitted she was was "struggling to cope" with them, while also caring for her ill husband and her elderly mother.
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