Backing our people as parents: introducing our childcare contribution

We’ve introduced a new policy to help our people with childcare costs. Backing our people as parents: introducing our childcare contribution. Childcare has become an enormous cost for many young families, often arriving exactly when parents are trying to return to work after parental leave.

Too often the sums simply don’t add up, and talented people step away from careers they love because childcare eats up much of what they earn. What we’re doing This year we introduced a new policy where permanent Raspberry Pi employees with a child between nine months and school age receive a salary uplift of £1,000 per calendar month, per child, as a contribution towards childcare costs (that’s the figure for full-time employees, and it’s pro-rated for part-time colleagues). With payments beginning once a child reaches the age of nine months — around the point when many parents are returning from leave — and continuing until the August before they start school, our aim is to ease the financial burden on young families.

There are no strings attached to how the money is used. It’s a straightforward contribution, paid through our payroll, and designed to take some of the pressure off during the most expensive early years of parenthood. Why it matters We think this matters for a few reasons.

First of all, supporting our colleagues through a demanding stage of life reflects the kind of company we want to be.