Wife having hours changed at work

[Racing Sombrero]

Hi,

Looking for some advice on behalf of my wife.
My wife is a nanny working for a family for the last 10 years and looks after 2 girls like her own. She'd been working about 30 hours a week for the first couple of years and most recently has been doing 18, not enough but she gets by. The kids are now older and need her less so they've asked her to take 9 hours. 3 days of 3 hours a week, it almost takes her more time to get to work than be at work. They have a complete monopoly on her time some weeks its Mon, Tues, Wed and the next week Wed, Thur, Fri. At half term she might do more hours like a day of 10 till 7.

Has she got any options ie refuse changes and take redundancy otherwise they will keep running down the hours until she leaves with nothing?

Thanks
Adam

[cowboyengineer]

What does her contract say?

[Racing Sombrero]

It would have had her 18 hours on it, maybe 4 weeks notice and her salary per hour. Not detailed at all its about half a page of a few bullet points given she's employed by a parent rather than company.

[OldGermanHeaps]

I can't offer any insight to the legal side, but to be honest, In the type of situation, working for a family directly, what did she think was going to happen long term, surely this was always on the cards, kids grow up and need less care, surely she didn't expect to be still getting the same hours by the time the kids can start to look after themselves?
is it a paye situation or is she working in a self employed capacity?

[Racing Sombrero]

She gets something similar to PAYE and definitely not self employed.

She's too nice, naive and always has been about it but like when she accepted the last reduction this ones completely pointless. For her its probably more the emotional bond of walking away instead but whilst times are tough getting a reasonable notice period and a small redundancy payout would go a long way for her.

[Kent Border Kenny]

It sounds as though it’s time for her to start looking to find another family to work for, possibly one that doesn’t yet need full time, and then to let the current family know that she’s not going to be able to be as flexible as she has been.

As others have said, the hours are going to likely continue to reduce, and there’ll come a day when she’s no longer needed regularly at all.

[OldGermanHeaps]

I wish you both all the best, what ever way you go with this but I would be really interested to hear the outcome, its something I had never given proper consideration to, I had always assumed these types of arrangements would be considered to be a kind of long term but ultimately temporary roles. I hadn't considered redundancy would be due when the kids no longer needed looked after.