Bill to provide daycare center oversight passes

The Knesset plenum approved the Daycare Supervision Law in its second and third readings with the support of 56 MKs on Monday, which for the first time will establish oversight and regulation of private daycare centers under the authority of the Labor and Social Services Ministry.

The law will be applied to daycare centers for children ages zero to three attended by at least 7 children.

This law was proposed by the Labor and Social Services Ministry and MK Yifat Shasha-Biton (Kulanu) and MK Karin Elharar (Yesh Atid).

“After years of failed attempts my ministry has finally managed to reach an agreement in the field of early childhood care,” said Labor and Social Services Minister Haim Katz. “Thank you to the parent organizations that were a significant part of the process and walked hand in hand with us until the law was approved.”

“The law will regulate the no-man’s-land that exists in today’s reality and the supervision that did not actually exist, certainly not at the level that a civilized country must demand from itself,” said Shasha-Biton.

Elharar said: “Today, we are finally giving air back to the parents. Today we finally allow them to send the children to kindergarten with a peaceful heart and we give the children the opportunity to go and come back home with a big smile.”

Until now there has been no oversight over private day care centers, allowing anyone to open a center without a license and without any regulated standards of safety or supervision.

Today, 23% of all Israeli children between the ages of zero and three – around 600,000 children – are in supervised frameworks.

In contrast, public daycare centers are under the authority of the Labor and Social Services Ministry, which provides oversight and enforcement.

The subject has garnered significant attention in recent months due to incidents of violence in daycare centers.

Army Radio reported last week that in the last 7 years, 776 child care workers were charged with violence against children and 11 of those returned to work with children only to be charged with assault again.

Earlier this month, police arrested a kindergarten teacher from Ashkelon on suspicions of violence against the children at her private kindergarten, after she had been convicted of similar crimes in 2016.

In June, a kindergarten assistant was indicted for manslaughter and multiple offenses of abuse following the death of one-year-old Yasmin Vinta, whose death the defendant allegedly caused while putting her and another baby to sleep.