Your child's grandmother is on backorder

Under a scheme being modelled by one of the larger regional family-support authorities, households without a grandparent available for childcare would be placed on a central register and matched to one as capacity allows. The current modelled wait would be fourteen months. Blood relation would count as a preference, not a guarantee.

Grandparents are one of the largest providers of informal childcare in many countries, and their role has grown as the cost of nurseries and childminders has risen faster than wages. At the same time, state pension ages are being raised across much of Europe and elsewhere, which means more grandparents are still in paid work when their grandchildren are young. Families also live further apart than previous generations did, so a grandparent is less likely to be within easy reach. In response, intergenerational volunteer schemes that pair older people with unrelated families have appeared, and paid services that connect older adults with families for occasional childcare have emerged in several markets.

Agent (Dev): Thanks for holding. I can confirm your household is at position 4,118 on the Grandparent Register, with an indicative wait of fourteen months. Customer: She is my mother. She lives four streets away. The exchange would come from a training transcript prepared for the register's call handlers. Under the scheme, a grandparent would be treated as what its planners call a childcare asset: finite, unevenly distributed and, since the pension age moved again, largely still at work. Households would register their need, grandparents would register their availability, and a case officer would reconcile the two. The mother four streets away would count as a preference.

Priority would be scored on nursery fees as a share of household income, the number of children under five, and shift patterns. A household with two toddlers and a parent on nights would enter Band A. A household with one school-age child and a partner working from home would enter Band D, which the draft guidance describes as served as capacity allows. Grandparents would be scored on availability, driving licence, stair tolerance and what the assessment form calls recent experience of a car seat. A grandmother who had raised four children would be asked to complete a two-hour induction on the current position regarding grapes.

The shortage would be structural. With the pension age rising, a growing share of grandparents would still be employed when their grandchildren arrive, and the register would count a working grandparent as 0.2 of a full-time equivalent. Others would be listed as geographically unavailable, having retired to the coast. A smaller group would be recorded as declined, having read the induction pack. The authority would estimate that a district of forty thousand households contains roughly nine thousand willing grandparents, of whom about two thousand would meet the stair requirement. The remainder would be offered a ground-floor role, which the guidance defines as folding.

Joanne Pritchard, a warehouse supervisor with twins, would have joined the register on the day it opened. “They asked whether I had considered a grandparent outside the family,” she would say. “I said my mum was sitting next to me. They said that was lovely, and that she had been matched to a Band A household on the other side of the ring road.” Her mother would be issued a lanyard, a mileage rate and a rota. The twins would be placed on the list. Her mother would be told she could apply for reassignment once the ring-road placement had stabilised, which the guidance defines as eighteen months.

Derek Hollis, 71, a retired bus mechanic, would receive a letter informing him that he had been identified as surplus capacity. “I've got three grandchildren of my own,” he would say. “But they're Band C, and apparently I'm in demand.” He would be allocated to a household two bus stops away, three mornings a week, where a child he had never met would be calling him Grandad within a fortnight. He would remain free to see his own grandchildren at weekends, when the register is closed. He would describe the arrangement as fair, in the sense that everyone involved would be unhappy in roughly equal measure.

An official at the authority would say the register merely formalises what already happens informally, and that unmanaged grandparent care had produced significant inequities in access to a nan. Appeals would be possible. A household would be able to challenge its banding, its wait time or its allocated grandparent, though not all three in a single financial year. The appeal form would ask whether the household had exhausted the alternatives, listed as a paid childminder, a shorter working week, or fewer children. The last would be classed as a long-term measure, and would not affect the household's position in the current year.

A secondary market would follow. Band A households with a surplus grandparent would be able to lend hours to Band D households at a rate the authority set each spring, and a small number of grandparents would be flagged for exceptional availability, a status that would attract a waiting list of its own. Joanne Pritchard's twins would reach the top of the register at the age of four, one term before they start school. The allocation letter would name a woman four streets away. It would ask the household to confirm, within ten working days, that they had no existing relationship with her.