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Child Care Services Staff

Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 11 May 2017

Thursday, 11 May 2017

Questions (11, 20, 21)

Robert Troy

Question:

11. Deputy Robert Troy asked the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs her plans to alleviate the issues facing community child care facilities. [22193/17]

View answer

Anne Rabbitte

Question:

20. Deputy Anne Rabbitte asked the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the steps she will take to ensure the community crèches remain viable in view of the decision to exclude community employment workers from child-worker ratios; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [22332/17]

View answer

Maureen O'Sullivan

Question:

21. Deputy Maureen O'Sullivan asked the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs her plans to address the difficulties for community child care in view of the fact that community employment workers are no longer considered eligible in the ratio of staff to children and there are implications regarding closures of some services and reduction in hours in areas of disadvantage in which these services are vital. [17856/17]

View answer

Oral answers (15 contributions)

We are all aware of the pivotal role community child care facilities play in providing affordable child care. The recent decision to preclude community employment workers from being considered part of the child-staff ratio has placed a major financial burden on community child care services. I tabled the question to give the Minister an opportunity to explain how the Department will alleviate the financial crisis being experienced by many community facilities.

I propose to take Questions Nos. 11, 20 and 21 together.

Community child care facilities are important partners in the delivery of affordable, accessible and high-quality child care. The majority of community child care services are operating well and have been able to manage issues they face within the structures available, including by availing of support from county and city child care committees, Pobal and my Department. Nevertheless, I have implemented a number of substantial measures in the past year to assist these services.

Most recently, I announced a substantial increase and expansion of the community child care subvention programme from September 2017, which will provide significant additional funding to families and services. In addition, strand 2 of the 2017 early years capital programme, which closed for application on Friday, 5 May, made €500,000 available in grants of up to €20,000 to community services which are seeking to make building improvements or undertake maintenance or refurbishment. These applications are being assessed and I anticipate recommendations on funding in the coming weeks.

I have also taken steps to provide payment to community services for non-contact time for the first time. This will be available during the summer. A total of €14.5 million is available across community and private services.

The Deputies will be aware of the challenges faced by a small number of community services which have been facilitating the training of community employment participants. Deputy Eugene Murphy raised this issue in an earlier question. I made €1 million in funding available to services that identified as having difficulties in this regard. The funding will ensure regulatory changes do not hinder service delivery or the availability of child care places. I will also consider how this funding can best be deployed in 2018 to address the most urgent challenges facing child care services.

In the longer term, the independent review of the cost of quality child care will also assist in addressing these issues. My priority is to ensure we provide access to high quality and affordable child care.

All Deputies accept the need for quality child care and minimum qualifications - that is a given. The Minister must accept that most community employment workers who commence work in child care services are taking part in training programmes under which they attain a level 5 qualification after the first year and a level 6 qualification after the second year. Earlier today, I spoke to a lady who runs the community child care service in Ballymahon, County Longford. Two community employment workers will finish work in the service tomorrow because it does not have enough money to retain them. These staff, one of whom has a level 5 qualification and the other a level 6 qualification, have been an integral and crucial part of the service's ratio.

The €1 million in additional funding provided by the Minister is simply not good enough. In 2016, child care facilities employed 1,816 community employment workers.

Assuming that most of those were working on at least a half-time basis, they would need to be paid for 20 hours per week 52 weeks per year. That is €16 million, but the Minister is only making €1 million available to replace community employment workers. I welcome the capital investment, but that will not solve the staffing ratio problem.

I appreciate the Deputy's figures and would be happy to show them to my Department so that they can be fed into our analysis. The Department, Pobal and county and city child care committees are working intensely with these community services and engaging directly with any that are impacted negatively by the change in ratios. Moneys are being made available in 2017 to ensure the sustainability of services. We will consider how to continue doing so for 2018. In addition, it is anticipated that significant income streams for those services and others will increase thanks to the increase in money for the targeted child care scheme, which will begin this year.

We have asked every service that believes it has to close because of the change in ratios as regards community employment workers to engage with us directly. We are hiring financial analysts to work with these services, examine their costs and business models and find individual ways to prevent them from having to close.

We will now take the associated questions, as I wish to give everyone time. We will revert to Deputy Troy for a supplementary question, but we will take initial questions from Deputies Rabbitte and Maureen O'Sullivan and then the Minister's reply. There will also be a supplementary question from Deputy Ó Laoghaire.

The Minister stated her view that the majority of community crèches were working well financially, but my opinion differs. Many community crèches are held together on a shoestring and by sellotape and are living on the lifeline presented by the introduction of the affordable child care scheme. With the removal of community employment workers, who played an integral part in child care, many community crèches are facing closure. Giving them financial advice could be too late for some. They must address the question of whether they will be able to open their doors in September. The community child care sector is on its knees. What intervention can we make to resuscitate it?

There is a disconnect between the figures cited by the Minister and the reality on the ground for community child care, certainly in my constituency. In the audio-visual, AV, room yesterday afternoon, I chaired a meeting with some providers from Cork, Dublin Central and Ronanstown as well as a group that provided community care in a number of other areas in Dublin. They all said the same thing, namely, they were dealing with children with acute special needs who came from dysfunctional families, children from new communities who did not have English as their first language and children from families with addiction issues.

No one disagrees with the need for high-quality training, but the issue with the community employment changes is that providers do not have the staff to continue some of their services. What is being cut the most are their baby hours. We know the importance of early intervention. Could there be a grandfather clause in respect of community employment workers until they have received training and can be kept on and is there a need to consider a DEIS-type status for community child care providers that work with the most vulnerable marginalised communities?

I want to be perfectly clear. I understand what the Deputies are saying and I understand the concerns and realities facing community child care. I have been identifying a number of actions, which the Department and county and city child care committees have taken. They are engaging. These actions are not enough, though, and we are considering additional actions. I have identified some. I understand what the issues are and have engaged on them.

Deputy Rabbitte stated that many services are about to close, but my understanding from my Department, which has been engaging with various services, is that many of them are doing okay. This is based on my evidence. If the Deputies know of services that they want the Department to start engaging with, they should please let me know.

I have direct engagement with many groups in Deputy Maureen O'Sullivan's constituency. Last week, they suggested the notion of a DEIS model for early years education and care. It is an innovative idea and we are discussing it, but it is more of a medium-term solution. I understand from where it is coming. From my Department's perspective, our money for child care is for child care. In disadvantaged communities, additional and special needs are being met by these community facilities without being given resources by the Department that gives money for child care. They are to be commended on that. This provides us with the data on which new models can be developed.

If the Deputies are aware of crèches or community services that are not being engaged with regarding their sustainability issues, let me know.

We will now take supplementary questions from Deputies Troy, Rabbitte, Maureen O'Sullivan and Ó Laoghaire. If we are good, we will get through all of them.

I acknowledge that the Department is engaging with services, but its budget is restricted in terms of what it can give them. Does the Minister accept that there must be a minimum ratio of adults to children in all services? Given the current number of children involved, community employment workers form part of that ratio. The Minister says that a service that takes in additional children in September because of the extension in free preschool years will get more resources, but those additional children will warrant the recruitment of extra staff, which means that the resources will not pay for current staff.

The €2,000 that is being given to certain services is not adequate. The €1 million pot is not adequate. At one stage, nine community employment workers formed part of Ballymahon's ratio. That number has dwindled month by month and the service is struggling. The Minister needs to revisit this matter with a view towards putting additional resources in the pot.

To follow on from that, we can be innovative. One of the great services that community crèches provide is the baby room, but it is the largest cost in the community sector. The baby room ratio is 3:1. For every three babies, there is one worker. If six babies are in the room, perhaps a community employment worker could be brought in to facilitate the service. Could community employment workers in kitchens or receptions help out during tea breaks or lunch breaks? Working with Tusla and the Department, is there any capacity to be innovative in how we support these services? Even if there is no budget, there must be ways to handle the ratio. The 3:1 would have to stay, but we should use people during tea breaks and lunch breaks or when staff are out sick or on annual leave. There should be a tolerance level in the ratio of staff in respect of community employment workers.

We must accept that we are not discussing a level playing field and that there are areas of greater need. Two of those who spoke at yesterday's meeting - one is from my constituency - discussed the anti-social behaviour and criminality that these young children see every day.

In fact, there was a murder outside a particular crèche some months ago - that is the reality.

The staff are working very hard. They made the point yesterday that there is so much research already, both domestic and international, that everybody knows what has to be done. However, with the funding issue, some stated they are being asked to come up with a sustainability plan but the only plan they can come up with is to cut services in order to be able to keep some part of their service going. It is important that four members of the Joint Committee on Children and Youth Affairs were present yesterday. It would be important that these people come before the committee and that something is prepared for the Minister as soon as possible.

I first raised this matter 12 months ago. While the €1 million was welcome, in many ways not much has changed. Many of the points have already been made, for example, on the issue of the crossover regarding those aged one to three years. I want to ask a very specific question. The services have drawn down a first tranche from the €1 million but that was only for advertisement and recruitment. To my knowledge, the vast majority of services have still not received money in order to be able to recruit people. The money in question is just for this year - just to keep the wolf from the door - but there is nothing in respect of the longer term issue. The services are borrowing and trying to find whatever way they can to keep their service going, and they are barely managing. They absolutely need to have that second tranche drawn down immediately. Otherwise, we will see, if not the closure of full services, then, at least in Cork, the closure of baby rooms and rooms for those aged from one to three years. The longer term issue is still outstanding but we need a commitment as to when that second tranche of funding from the €1 million will be paid.

First, it is good to hear all of these passionate arguments in respect of the issues under discussion. That helps me in my job in regard to this issue, so I thank Deputies for that. Second, if I heard Deputy Maureen O'Sullivan correctly, she suggested that the Joint Committee on Children and Youth Affairs may take this up as an issue and bring some suggestions or recommendations to me. I think that is a great suggestion and it would again provide some assistance.

I have outlined the actions that are currently being taken. I hear from the Deputies' perspective that this is not sufficient, which I acknowledge. I would also like to see more done and I accept that it is difficult to wait for the money. My understanding is that they are working as quickly as possible in terms of getting that drawn down. I will give the Deputies a commitment to find out exactly when that is, just to be precise about that. That is all I will say for now. Some actions have been taken, although they are not sufficient from the Deputies' perspective. Perhaps some more analysis needs to be done and, clearly, more resources are needed, which I accept.

That concludes Question Time. Before he left the Chamber, Deputy Broughan said he would accept a written reply.

Written Answers are published on the Oireachtas website.
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