Putting the 'child' back in childcare

WHEN EXPECTING your first baby you really have no clue what lies ahead and how your life will be changed forever. Although I wanted to go back to work after the birth of my first child 10 years ago, I ruined those precious months of maternity leave worrying about finding a childcare solution for my son.

It's funny how you view these issues in a different light when your own child is involved.

I was dreading the day when I was going to have to hand his care over to someone else. I knew it had to be more than care in terms of keeping him safe; I was handing him over at a most formative stage of his development.

Children's brains are more receptive to learning in the first five years than at any other time in their lives.

Where working parents are forced, or choosing, to put children into full-time care, we are effectively outsourcing our parenting, although we don't always like to admit it. Once you add commuting times to an eight-hour working day, it is not unusual for children to be spending up to 11 hours a day in the childcare system.

Whether that is right is another debate. The reality is that many children are spending all this time in childcare, so it must be of the highest quality. Yet, despite the unprecedented boom years, this country is bottom of the EU league for spending on childcare and early education.

Just 0.2 per cent of national income (GDP) is invested in such services, while Denmark, Sweden, Finland and France spend at least 1 per cent of GDP on them.

Playing catch-up in providing childcare places to meet the economy's need for more women in the workplace, State investment has been concentrated on capital grants to increase supply.

The National Childcare Investment Programme 2006 to 2010 promised 50,000 new childcare places.

There was a belief that increased supply would somehow drive down the cost to parents. But a sector that goes to the heart of family life and the raising of the next generation can not be left solely to the crude economics of demand and supply. And since salaries make up at least 70 per cent of a childcare provider's cost, with many of those staff on the minimum wage - and obviously basic staff numbers being non-negotiable in any regulated creche - costs to parents are never going to go down.

There are also signs, especially in the current recession, that there are now too many childcare places in parts of the State.

The findings of the National Children's Nurseries Association's (NCNA's) latest survey of its 800 members suggest the future of quality childcare is precarious. The hundreds of millions poured into the sector by governments over the past decade will be wasted if parents can no longer afford to avail of it, the association warns.

Parents now pay an average of €174 nationally per child per week, rising to more than €250 per child per week in Dublin - which is nearly €1,000 a month for one child. And that is all out of after-tax income.

The NCNA director of services, Teresa Heeney, points out: "Today it is possible to pay for public transport out of gross income and surely it is fair to suggest that childcare should be treated in the same way."

The early childhood supplement of €1,100 a year (up to the age of five and a half) covers on average of only 10 per cent of the cost of a childcare place - leaving parents paying the other 90 per cent. And, of course, that untargeted supplement was a political fudge for fear of being seen to favour working parents over stay-at-home parents and is of no meaningful help in choosing to be one or the other.

Irish parents are paying more for childcare than in most other European countries. A typical Irish family of two working parents and two children under the age of three spends more than 29 per cent of its net income on childcare. Its counterparts in Belgium, Portugal and Poland all pay less than 5 per cent of their income.

With much attention having been paid to the lack of childcare places, it might come as news that the NCNA survey has found that, on average, eight childcare places out of every 50 are vacant across the State, which must threaten the viability of some providers.

On the other hand, considering that, increasingly, parents can no longer afford to pay for the places, maybe it is no surprise. While the rise in unemployment may account for part of that trend, there is also the worry that parents are being forced to seek cheaper, unregulated childcare.

The NCNA is "gravely concerned" that if some supports are not introduced for working parents, very soon regulated childcare will become unaffordable.

For all the talk over the years about capital investments and places to "park" children as if they were cars for the day, there has been precious little meaningful attention paid at State level to the standards of care and staff training - all the regulations are focused on the physical surroundings rather than other aspects which contribute to children's mental wellbeing.

That's symptomatic of a childcare policy that was more concerned about getting women into the workforce to meet the economy's needs, rather than looking at what would really benefit children during most of their waking hours, five days a week. At best it has been an opportunity lost in capitalising on the value of early childhood education, at worst it is has been damaging for some of the next generation.

The closure of the Centre for Early Childhood Development and Education, announced in the 2009 Budget cutbacks, was a small but stark example of where political priorities lie. Yet there is plenty of evidence from other countries that State investment in quality childcare and pre-school education pays off economically, never mind socially and morally.

Dr Orla Doyle of UCD's School of Public Health and Population Science told a recent conference that well-designed early childhood interventions in the US have generated returns to society of up to $17 (€13) for each dollar spent.

The childcare sector is "riddled with problems" going into 2009, says Irene Gunning, the chief executive officer of IPPA, the Early Childhood Organisation. Although it has not done a formal survey this year of its 2,500 members (of whom about 400 would be providing full-time childcare), there is anecdotal evidence that they share the same concerns as those highlighted by the NCNA.

"There has been investment in quantity but limited investment in quality," says Gunning. "It is an expensive thing to invest in, but it is our children. They say childcare is a market issue, but can we really sit back and see children treated as what the market can bear? Quality childcare is an entitlement in other European countries."

Such childcare, at least on a part-time basis, is equally important in a time of rising unemployment, she says, when families are under huge pressure, with people having to go out looking for jobs.

Meanwhile, community childcare creches have been convulsed over the fall-out from the Government decision at the beginning of the year to change their system of funding. Instead of subsidising staff salaries in community creches, the grants were redirected to parents on welfare.

This has driven up the costs to low-income working parents and, say operators of community creches, started to "ghettoise" children of parents on social welfare.

It also means, as one private childcare provider pointed out at the launch of the NCNA survey, if a child's parents become unemployed, albeit temporarily, that child has to be moved to a community creche if they are going to receive any financial help with the fees.

"We have always known that sessional care is good for children and good for families," says Gunning. "It relieves the stress. At times like this, we have to invest in young families. It's hard to understand why they don't get it."

She fears that in the current economic crisis, childcare will be seen as a "soft option" for cutting back investment. Yet it is the children of today who are going to have the creative solutions for all of our futures, she suggests.

"If we put the richness of resources into children, we will reap the rewards, whether we are parents or not. It is not just a parents' problem, it is a societal issue."

Changing work patterns and lifestyles are challenging the creches

Changing work patterns, lifestyles and a drop in full-time employment have left many parents wanting only part-time childcare for their children, which will be a challenge for providers geared up for full-time care.

The 2008 survey of the 800 members of the National Children's Nurseries Association (NCNA) found that 47 per cent of the more than 40,000 children in their care are put into childcare on a part-time basis.

The Little Darlings creche in Sandymount, Co Dublin found that cutting back to offering only part-time care has worked well for parents, children and staff alike.

Owner Heather Burnett-Niland made the change three years ago in response to demand from parents, who were looking for mornings only, or two or three days a week. Having opened as a full-time creche in 1991 and operating with full-time staff, she found it hard to facilitate part-time requests, as rarely could she match one parent's part-time needs with another to fill a full-time place. However, increasingly parents were looking for about 25 hours of childcare a week with her, she says, "as they were trying to fit full-time work into part-time hours".

A relative doing some childminding, or work being squeezed into hours after the children's bedtime make up the time.

When Burnett-Niland switched to opening Little Darlings only from 8am to 2.30 pm each day, she lost just 20 per cent of her children.

"Eighty per cent of parents were willing to work with, or were looking for, the reduced hours. In two or three families, where the parents stayed working full-time, au pairs took over in the afternoon."

This means the children have the advantage of socialising in the creche in the morning and being cared for in their own homes in the afternoon. Such an arrangement also enables pre-school children to spend the afternoon with their school-going siblings.

"The first year I was worried and wondered how long it would take me to be full, but by Christmas I was full again. I am now fully booked until September '09," she says.

The shorter hours also suit the staff, some of whom have been with her for more than 10 years and have school-going children of their own now. It also means she herself can catch up on administration once the children have gone home.

There are eight staff for the 34 children and she has no doubt that happier staff contributes to a higher standard of childcare.

"A lot of childcare staff are working long hours. The newly-built creches with high overheads have to be open as much as possible, from 7am to 7pm.

"The saddest thing," she adds, "is that the child who is there waiting at five to seven when the door opens will be the same one there at five past seven when it's closing, due to the parents' commute."