Community Childcare Subvention Scheme
9 Jan 2008
The Inner City Organisations Network and the North West Inner City Area Network convened an emergency meeting of community childcare providers in October to discuss the impact which the new Community Childcare Subvention Scheme will have on disadvantaged children, parents, communities and providers. The meeting heard that there is huge concern among community childcare providers about the implications of the new funding scheme. Many providers believe that as a result of the new funding system they may be forced to close or radically reduce the scale and quality of their service. It is worth noting that in Dublin City, 41% of all childcare facilities are community providers.
The key problems with the Community Childcare Subvention Scheme include the following:
- It is an inequitable system because it will result in depriving many low-income families of a childcare service as they will simply not be able to afford the fees. It is likely to force parents who are in training, education and low pay back on to welfare and into an employment and poverty trap.
- The Community Childcare Subvention Scheme will effectively reduce the amount of funding which the community childcare services have to run their services. Many such services have had to struggle to survive under the EOCP system. But the result of the CCSS will be that many services will close, the numbers of children they work with will be reduced, staff may be made redundant and the quality of services will be adversely affected. The major losers in all this will be disadvantaged children, their parents and their communities.
Below is a report which provides some documentary evidence of how the CCSS will negatively impact on community childcare providers in Dublin's Inner City.
We will show that the measures as proposed under the new Community Childcare Subvention Scheme rather than 'target resources more effectively to disadvantaged parents with children in community childcare services' will actually compromise the provision and quality of these very services in some of the most disadvantages communities in the state.
Community-Based, Not-for-Profit Childcare Providers in the NEIC and NWIC of Dublin
Impact of the Community Childcare Subvention Scheme (CCSS) on children, parents, communities and childcare providers of the NEIC and NWIC areas.
REPORT CONTEXT
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This report seeks to demonstrate the actual impact of this scheme on Community-based Childcare providers in the North East and North West Inner City, through a mixture of case studies, policy analysis and recommendations. All of the case studies provided are from community-based childcare services located in RAPID and Local Drug Task Force areas, thus are communities experiencing the most poverty, disadvantage and marginalisation in the State. This report is an initial collation of the impacts of the CCSS and only provides a snapshot of the anticipated consequences should the scheme be rolled out.
We wish to acknowledge the increase in funding under the National Childcare Investment Programme (NCIP) and welcome this, but must point out that the result of the proposed CCSS on every Community-based Childcare Provider in the NEIC and NWIC who participated in this Case Study report is a reduction in service provision and funding.
CASE STUDIES
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Following the October meeting a questionnaire was distributed to community childcare providers to estimate the impact of CCSS on children, parents, communities and providers. The responses from these providers are featured below.
PROJECT A: North East Inner City Community-based Childcare Provider
Number of children in crèche: 43 children
What do you forecast will be the income of your crèche in 2008 under the new Childcare Subvention Scheme?
*€142,252
*this figure is calculated from our current profile of service users which consists of parents on both Band A and B.
What do you estimate will be the shortfall in your income as a result of the new Childcare Subvention Scheme?
*€40,123.50
* this will equate to 1 full time and 1 part time staff member being made redundant and therefore a dramatic reduction of the number of children we work with e.g. 16 children.
PROJECT B: North West Inner City Community-based Childcare Provider
Number of children in crèche: 52 children.
What do you forecast will be the income of your crèche in 2008 under the new Childcare Subvention Scheme?
Approx €29,400
What do you estimate will be the shortfall in your income as a result of the new Childcare Subvention Scheme?
Approx €25,000
PROJECTS C: North West Inner City Community-based Childcare Providers
What do you estimate will be the shortfall in your income as a result of the new Childcare Subvention Scheme?
*€151,000
*the above figure is based on the combined loss of five services and the loss for each service ranges from €25,000 to just under €39,000.
These services all support some of the most disadvantaged communities in the city. We are still identifying precisely how many childcare places will be lost and how many jobs will go. However, the loss of jobs will mainly affect local women as they are predominantly working in these services. Many of these women have trained on community based employment and education projects in order to access employment and become economically independent.
MAIN IMPACTS ON CHILDREN, PARENTS, COMMUNITIES AND PROVIDERS
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Child-centeredness & Quality Childcare
- Loss of revenue for staffing costs would lead to loss of childcare places and loss of jobs. Excellent quality services will suffer and professionals will become disillusioned. Therefore, the most marginalized children in the NWIC and NEIC will be excluded from early childhood care and education services as a result of subvention.
- In the CCSS there is no mention of additional funding to facilitate the implementation of Síolta, the National Framework for ECCE and quality childcare through the increase in staffing grants. Similarly, there is no mention of funding to cover the real costs associated with running a crèche e.g. Staff Childcare Training, Staff Advertisements, Learning Materials and Resources for Children, Audit Fees, Food, Lighting and Heating, Maintenance Costs, the list goes on.
In order to provide quality childcare then the sector needs to be properly resourced with an associated running costs budget to facilitate the employment of qualified staff to fully implement Síolta. Similarly, this budget would support the purchase of good quality learning materials and associated running costs of the service, thereby providing quality childcare.
- The impact of job losses with the commensurate effect on staff:children ratios has yet to become clear for services. The existing dependency of community based services on Community Employment (CE) schemes for adequate staffing already creates difficulties for sustainability and the provision of highly qualified childcare workers.
- The requirement of staff to 'police' parents financial status will undermine the development of relationships of trust and sensitivity which are central to providing a child & family-centred environment.
- The CCSS grant is based on actual numbers of children and does not take into account the areas that children are living in (e.g. RAPID/LDTF areas) and therefore the need for greater investment and subvention. The EOCP has worked in the main off numbers of children e.g. max threshold level for example. This is highly problematic as children from the NEIC require greater staff/child ratio due to disadvantage in these areas and the educational gap. They also need skilled/qualified staff to work directly with them so that they can enter school at a similar level to those from middle class areas. What is currently happening in the NEIC and NWIC is that parents from these areas are largely subsidizing the employment of qualified staff and all the associated running costs of the crèche. Community Childcare in the NEIC and NWIC areas should be heavily resourced due to the levels of disadvantage and therefore greater subvention is required through increased staffing grants and an associated running costs grant.
Equity and Equality
- Parents who managed to get themselves into employment, be it low paid employment, will not be able to afford increased childcare costs and will either withdraw from the services or refuse to divulge personal information to the services. This may mean some parents are forced to return to the live register, and are consequently back where they started in the poverty trap and may find it hard to break the poverty/disadvantaged cycle.
- Gender Implications: The availability of affordable, quality childcare services has been named as a key requirement to support women entering employment, education, undertaking rehabilitation programmes and participating fully in all aspects of community and civic society by all statutory agencies, community based organisations and NGOs. The impact of this change in funding will fall disproportionately on women from working class and low income backgrounds and undermine all state targets on the full participation of women in the economy and society.
- Parents living in the NEIC and NWIC who do not quality for FIS or Social Welfare and who are in low paid full time work will be forced to use private crèches. This will place them under huge financial pressure causing poverty and or may result in them becoming dependent again on Social Welfare. Similarly, those on the Back to Work Allowance (BTWA) will not be able to afford to access private childcare once they relinquish their BTWA and therefore will immediately need to access SW, thus going against what BTWA is.
- Given that the OMC's main objective was to either hold or progress parents into employment or further education/training, the NCIP strategic targeting criteria will now have the effect of undermining the quality of childcare within the individual family context.
- Class segregation: Parents who are SW and/or FIS recipients will be only able to access places in community crèches for their children and so the crèche will only be used by Social Welfare recipients. This will not promote social inclusion but further segregate classes within the inner city.
- Integration: The impact on ethnic minority families is unclear at present. Attempting to support women for whom English is not a first language to understand these changes and the requirement to collect information of this nature will be difficult for staff. Services have expressed concerns that structurally a situation may emerge where it will appear they are either excluding ethnic minority children OR only providing ethnic minority children with places. Either scenario will undermine local efforts to develop multicultural services and contribute to the emergence of racist ideas.
- Sustainability: The emphasis on the development of sustainable child & family services in the most disadvantaged communities in the inner city requires open debate. It is unlikely that services in these communities can ever exist without state support. DCC has itself acknowledged this reality by voting (Dec. 2007 council proceedings) to establish public funding for 3 DCC run services in its areas.
- Means Testing: Community Crèches under the NCSS will have to question parents about their SW status. We are childcare providers and not an arm of the state and therefore need to build relationships with parents and not start off on an invasive footing. It would be advantageous not to start off in this way. Schools at primary and secondary level are not required to ask these types of questions to parents and therefore if you view the pre-school sector as early education (the first step of the education continuum), then why is it that parents are being expected to answer these questions?
HR and Administration
- Human Resources and Staff contracts: Due to the nature of the proposed scheme funding will be determined based on the number of children accessing the service and their parent's Social Welfare status on an annual basis. Therefore, providers will not be able to determine their annual budget which will result in staff being placed on protective notice.
In the past the EOCP programme worked over a 3 year period and therefore services could issue 3 year contracts. This uncertainty will create a fragile environment where qualified staff may be forced to seek employment among private childcare providers in order to have sustainable employment. The legality of offering employment contracts in these circumstances is unclear.
- Administration burdens: Administration of the new CCSS will be a time consuming exercise in already stretched services. Without an increase in the staffing grant to allow for an administrator, how is it envisaged that community crèches will have the TIME to administer the CCSS.
Many smaller services are dependent on voluntary support or shared administration arrangements with larger organizations to complete reports, financial and otherwise. The pressure on management committees to manage these processes as well as existing childcare, HR and management responsibilities has already led to one service in the north west questioning its capacity to remain open.
- Community services: It is unclear what the impact of the CCSS will be on other community based interventions into poverty and disadvantage which rely on the availability of locally based childcare to support participation and engagement in their programmes. It is likely that community based education, counseling, drugs and employment services will experience a drop in participation particularly from younger women.
Many services provide sessional / drop in spaces to women in work (often low paid work) who are also using other community programmes. If places are reduced or as is anticipated some smaller services close completely this will no longer be available
RECOMMENDATIONS
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Continue EOCP level funding for the year 2008 and undertake full/more complete national consultation with parents, communities and Community-based Childcare Providers in order to determine the impact of what is proposed and develop a workable programme into 2009 under the NCIP.
Under the NCIP, ensure that staffing grants increase in line with Towards 2016 National Pay Agreements. As under the EOCP programme over a 6 year period a 15% increase was factored into this grant, despite there being 33% pay increases awarded nationally as part of Sustaining Progress. This resulted in Community Childcare Providers having to make up the remainder as the EOCP grant did not fully cover national pay agreements.
Review the Subvention criteria in partnership with community-based childcare providers and parents.
In order to provide quality childcare then the sector needs to be properly resourced. This would result in an associated running costs budget being provided to facilitate the employment of staff to fully implement Síolta. Similarly, this budget would support the purchase of good quality learning materials and associated running costs of the service, thereby providing quality childcare.
Acknowledge that early childhood care and education is not sustainable and should therefore be viewed as the first stage in the education continuum and so properly resourced in line with the education sector.
Appendix 1
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ICON Emergency meeting 18th October 2007
Re: Childcare Subvention Scheme
Groups discussed the potential impact that subvention would have on their centres and 20 people attended this meeting.
A summary of the impacts of subvention on these providers included the following:
Closure of services.
Reduction in grants.
Reduction in the number of children we work with.
Staff redundancies.
Extra administrative work in already stretched services.
Very invasive - requesting personal information from parents which changes the role of childcare providers.
Negative impact on quality childcare, as there would be a reduction in staff due to a reduction in funding.
There are current language barriers and to try to get people to fill in forms would require a significant amount of time to support them.
Increase in fees, therefore making childcare less affordable.
People who don't fall into Band A or B will be excluded from community crèches and forced to pay private sector rates.
Dramatic increase of childcare fees for CTC participants and young people accessing Youthreach, as they will fall into Band B and will therefore only receive €26 subvention as opposed to €80.
How will the Pen Green Programme (a valuable Early Years development Programme) be delivered if more time is required to administer subvention as opposed to improving quality childcare?
Residents concerned that they won't be able to afford childcare and they won't be able to access childcare in their area.
Some minority cultures in private rented accommodation, because of their legal status do not want to declare information.
Concern about peoples other benefits being affected by subvention as PPS numbers have to be given. Therefore, women will withdraw from the workforce as they will not want to declare.
Class segregation.
Forcing people into a poverty trap and out of the labour market.
Little flexibility.
Subvention does not include any operational costs.
It emerged from the Dublin meeting with Pobal and the OMC that one childcare provider was consulted in relation to the new subvention scheme.
