Parents facing perfect storm due to shortages in childcare
PARENTS’ anxiety over Covid and capacity issues in creches are combining to create the perfect storm when it comes to childcare.
As a society, the pandemic has affected us in many ways but for young families the lack of access to formal childcare facilities has been particularly hard to deal with.
Just over half of formal childcare settings have been able to open during the current lockdown: around 2,000 providers out of 3,800 have been able to stay open, according to Early Childhood Ireland (ECI). ECCE-only facilities had to stay closed until today.
Furthermore, less than half of all childminders have been able to continue working in recent months. Parenting websites are full of ads seeking childcare – while Covid regulations and staff shortages in childcare settings has seen capacity hugely reduced.
Widespread closures have so far been avoided purely due to emergency Government funding including the Wage Subsidy Scheme and the Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP).
However, despite the current challenges, the latest figures from Tusla reveal that 91 new services opened in 2020, compared with 93 in 2019.
When it comes to closures, 93 settings shut their doors in 2020, which was just one more than the 92 recorded in 2019.
According to ECI, half of the facilities that have been able to remain open are operating at less than 50pc occupancy. Just over a third are at 20-25pc capacity.
The forthcoming National Remote Work Strategy will see many families reassessing their choices. Campaigners have expressed concern that it will be women who take a step back from their careers amid
childcare issues.
Teresa Heeny, CEO of ECI, said another factor was at play and that was parental confidence.
“Will parents be confident enough to come back to childcare settings, given their own circumstances? And the more long-ranging issue is what will Covid do to parents in the long term?” she said.
“We will likely see a change in the way parents work and the way they use early-year services. If we have seen anything from Covid, it’s how utterly essential this sector is, and it needs to be supported properly in the future so that working parents and children can find the supports that they need.”
An estimated 15,000 childminders work in Ireland and many of them have continued to work through the pandemic, according to Bernadette Orbinski Burke of Childminding Ireland.
A recent survey found just 48pc of them have been able to mind the children of essential workers. “There’s certainly less childminders than there normally would be and it’s very difficult. Childminders often do work for essential workers because of the shift patterns and flexibility that they can offer that creches can’t,” she said.
A campaign is currently under way to see childminders and their families given better access to the vaccine.
“We would argue that childminders are actually essential workers because they’re empowering other essential workers to get back to work and we’re lobbying the Department of Health to this effect,” she said.
“Everyone is saying that getting people back to work will be much more difficult than stopping work.”