In many ways it is closer to America, where the government stingily but even-handedly pays neither parent to look after children.
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.
Yet some, inside government and outside it, cling to the belief that the problem of children living in the streets or under them has come about because people are too lazy to look after their children and too ready to accept handouts.
ECONOMIST: The street children are the symptom of a bigger problem
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.
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.
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.
ECONOMIST: The street children are the symptom of a bigger problem
Staff at nurseries in England should be allowed to look after more children at once, Schools Minister Elizabeth Truss has urged.
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.
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.
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.
BBC: Huge and angry response to childcare plans, says charity
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.
BBC: Dumfries couple Barry and Roberta Little scoop lottery win
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.
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?
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.
BBC: News | UK | 'Night of the short knives' disappoints press
The second case before the Lords concerned Kenneth and Julia McFarlane he a senior tax partner at Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, she a well-paid solicitor before she gave up her job to look after their three children.
Lorna says while she would like to work full time, she has three children to look after so depends on the state subsidies to supplement her low-paying, part-time job in the borough's school kitchens.
CNN: UK's poorest banking on food donations as austerity bites
And I think that sharing the responsibility from the start when it comes to children and household shores will make sure that it's not only the woman's responsibility to look after the home and children when the children are growing up either.
"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.
At least 200 new foster families are needed across Northern Ireland this year to look after the record numbers of children in care, figures show.
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.
He told the mother that she seemed to struggle to understand that as a parent of children she "had to nurture them, support them, look after them and protect them".
BBC: Mother of wandering Flintshire street boy, 5, is warned
The book was inspired by the Eden Project, which is all about teaching children how we need to look after plants and how plants can look after us.
BBC: NEWS | Science/Nature | Electric book wins science prize
Anand Shukla, from national childcare charity Daycare Trust, said: "No matter how well qualified the members of staff, there are practical considerations when you increase the number of children that they have to look after, " he said.
应用推荐