After-school services must hit new standards with Katherine Zappone set to unveil action plan in coming weeks
Under the budget’s new childcare scheme aimed at the lower paid, parents will be entitled to a subsidy towards after-school and holiday childcare until a child is aged 15.
However, after-school services are not governed by any regulations and are not inspected by the Child and Family Agency, Tusla or by Pobal, which completes inspects free preschool year providers.
This means that while staff/children ratios exist for younger children and regulations around quality of education and care, there is no such system in place for older children. After-school providers have made a number of presentations in recent weeks to the Department of Education and the Department of Children and Youth Affairs inter-departmental group which is drawing up the new action plan.
It’s believed the Department of Children may look to set up a self-regulation model in the short term where they will sign up to adhere to a set of standards rather than be subject to a fully-resourced inspection system. The Oscar system in New Zealand is one such model that could be replicated here. Oscar-accredited after-school and holiday camps run services grounded in an agreed model of child wellbeing, health and safety, staffing, and governance.
The Programme for Government has also made commitments to examine the use of schools for after-school services.
Early Childhood Ireland CEO, Theresa Heaney, said the new single affordable childcare scheme was a “golden opportunity” to look at the after-school sector. She said she would be “interested to see how much the voice of children will be listened to by the indepartmental group”.
“Children contributed to their work and they have clear views on what kind of care they like when school is over,” she said.
Meanwhile, speaking on RTÉ radio yesterday, Ms Zappone strongly defended her new childcare schemes, saying the targeted scheme will help parents who want to go back to work or education. She said she is confident that childing-minding services “will be able to meet demand from parents”.
“In April of this year, Pobal said there are vacancies in services for the other age groups, the non-ECCE age groups.” she said.
- Targeted at lower income families with children aged from 6 months to 15 years.
- The lower income threshold is €22,700 net.
- The higher income threshold is €47,500 net.
- The new scheme means that parents will only have to pay an average top-up payment of €12 for 40 hrs of childcare if they meet the lower threshold.
- Open to all families with children under 3 years, regardless of income.
- Creches will be paid a maximum of €960 per year per child / €80 per month if the child is in a crèche for 40 hours.
- If a child attends a crèche for less than 40 hours, they will be subsidised pro-rata.
