Irish early years organisations call for more childcare funding

In their pre-budget submissions, Early Childhood Ireland and Start Strong call upon the Irish Government to invest additional millions into improving the quality and affordability of early years services in the country.

Improving quality

Start Strong’s submission recommends the Government carries out an audit of the quality of early care and education services immediately, as recommended by the Expert Advisory Group on the National Early Years Strategy last year.

It follows the RTE Prime Time ‘Breach of Trust’ TV programme in June 2013, which revealed below standards of care and mistreatment at some of Ireland’s crèches.

Start Strong, a coalition of organisations and individuals committed to advancing high-quality care and education in Ireland, goes on to suggest public funding be conditional on quality, so that when early years services fail to meet standards their funding is withdrawn.

At present services that are found to be of low-quality are either fined or de-registered.

Start Strong also makes a number of recommendations for early years inspectors, including increasing their number and employing inspectors that are trained and qualified in early childhood care and education.

Currently, those who carry out inspections are public health nurses together with environmental health officers.

Funding

Early Childhood Ireland’s pre-budget submission, ‘Getting the best start’, argues that sustainability is the ‘dominant’, pressing issue in the sector, and a significant threat to quality provision.’ It says that current rates of funding are inadequate to cover the basic operating costs of the majority of services and this must be addressed urgently.

The organisation recommends that funding increase by €10.50, from €62.50 to €73 per week in 2015, with a further €10 per week rise in 2016 and 2017. This would bring the rate of funding to €93 per child per week.

Up-skilling the workforce

Another recommendation made by Start Strong is to ‘significantly’ increase investment in early years staff in order to achieve a graduate-led workforce in early years services.

Similarly, Early Childhood Ireland suggests introducing a Graduate Staffing fund to provide a €7,000 grant to every early years service that employs a graduate, moving toward parity of pay with primary teachers.

It says that qualifications within the sector have risen incrementally, but pay and conditions have not, which creates a very real problem of retaining staff.

Early Childhood Ireland also recommends making the Learner Fund, a subsidy for existing staff to achieve awards at Levels 5 and 6, available to all existing staff and include Levels 6, 7 and 8, as well as those working with children under the age of three.

At present, the Learner Fund is limited to those working with children taking up their free pre-school year place, known as the Early Childhood Care and Education scheme (ECCE).

Under the ECCE scheme, children aged over three years and two months and less than four years seven months are entitled to a free childcare place.

Making childcare more affordable for parents

Extending existing schemes of subsidising places, Start Strong says, is the answer to making childcare more affordable.

Within its pre-budget submission, the coalition recommends extending the Community Childcare Subvention (CCS) subsidy for disadvantaged families.

Currently the CCS is only available to take up in selected community-based services. These community services are also concentrated only in disadvantaged communities, whereas Start strong says that not all disadvantaged families live in these areas.

Start Strong proposes making it so disadvantaged families can take up their subsidised place in private nurseries and with childminders, who meet quality standards, as well as at community services, as already happens with the ECCE scheme.

It also recommends parents eligible for Ireland’s Childcare Employment and Training Support Scheme (CETS), which provides a subsidised place where the main carer of a child is on an eligible training course or a Community Employment scheme, be able to take up their place with a childminder.

Start Strong also proposes the introduction of a new 100 per cent subsidy for families with ‘high-levels of need’ covered through public funding. To be eligible, families would need to be referred by a GP, public health nurse or social worker.

Ciairín de Buis, director of Start Strong, said, 'Now is the time for the Government to plan for a secure, long-term recovery. To achieve this, investment in early care and education must be a priority.
 
'Research shows that early care and education only benefits children when it's high-quality.  We need to ensure staff are appropriately qualified and the proper funding and supports are in place to ensure high standards.

'When the Free Pre-School Year was introduced in 2010, the Government cut €320 million from the early years budget. If that whole sum were reinvested in early years services and supports, the investment level would still not reach the international average. Additional investment must start now and build over the years ahead.'

Teresa Heeney, chief executive of Early Childhood (pictured), who took over the role from Irene Gunning in March, said, ‘The bottom line in our pre-budget submission is that we are asking the Government in 2015 to invest €3,760 in care and early education for each child in a registered setting which equates to an additional investment of €351 million from the Department of Children & Youth Affairs.'