Early Childcare Crisis In Clare With 1,195 Children Under Three On Waiting List

Now, a new report from early childhood Ireland paints a stark picture of the child care

crisis with 59% of adults in monster, saying the government is not doing enough to address

the shortage of early years' places. In Clareloon, up to 1195 children under the age of three

are currently on waiting lists, while services are also struggling with staffing shortages

and limited funding. To discuss what's behind the numbers, and what it means for families

locally, I'm joined now by the Director of Policy at early childhood Ireland, Francis

thank you so much for being with us. Good morning, Alan, thanks so much for having

already childhood Ireland on. This latest parameter, as I mentioned,

close to 60% of adults in this province, I think the government is doing enough,

but you'd have a better sense of it than us. How serious is this situation right now?

Well, it's quite serious, and at the time of going to the public Red Sea, we had given them figures

of almost 40,000. Across the country, there's now closer to 46,000 children, and as you say,

the number in Clare has risen to almost 1,200 children since the last time that we were on

discussing this, so it's very, very serious. Certainly, government is rolling out,

state-led services this year. That's very welcome, but there will only be

afe of them by the end of the year, so we're in this situation where one of our members also

from Munster yesterday was telling a story of a woman who hadn't even conceived yet,

contacting her for a place at her setting because she knew that there was a long waiting list

of this particular setting. It doesn't happen in other countries, and so we could solve this

by investing more, by building more, and by assessing needs to make sure that every child

has access to a place, and I'm very pleased to say that that is 79% support for that, of course,

the country. But in Munster, 81% of adults, more than 4 and 5, agree that every child should be

guaranteed access to early years of school age care in their community just as they are in other

countries. And it seems, Francis, that have gone by those stats that the public is ahead

of government policy, and there's also strong support for a Nordic-style model for those not

overly familiar with that. What would that look like in practice if brought in here in Ireland?

Yeah, 71% of the public across Munster agrees that we should move to an Nordic model.

So an Nordic model describes 4 or 5 different countries. I'm sure it drives the mad that we all

had to group them into one in the rest of Europe, but essentially what it means is that every parent

unless their destitute pays something, even the richest and the poorest contribute something,

but that there's so much investment in early years of school age care that those fees are kept

very affordable, that public investment pays for most of us, that staff wages are paid publicly,

that staff who are qualified like teachers receives the same terms and conditions as those primary

school teachers. And in fact, if you're the PhD and you're working in Finland in a setting,

you get more than a teacher, and so on, and indeed over 61% of adults in Munster think that should

be the case here, and that's something early childhood Ireland has been fighting for, and that's

really the big issue facing settings in Claire and across the country. Some of them have the ability

to or the capacity to expand and welcome in more children and reduce their weighting lists,

and the thing that stops them from doing is is concerns about staffing. We've a 22%

staff turnover rate in Claire, that's slightly lower than the rest of the country, but it's

unacceptable. It wouldn't be accepted in any other part of the education system. We've 195

early childhood Ireland members in the county of Claire, and they tell us every day of the week

of the struggles they have finding staff and keeping them, and it's not their fault. Again,

it goes back to this lack of investment. The wages are kept are very, very low because of that,

whereas in Nordic countries, as I said, early years, educators, school aged care practitioners

are treated like professionals recognized as though uncompensated as though.

Nearly eight and ten people, Francis, think early years education should be free, but I just

wonder, given we've just, you've been mentioning there, and many times on morning focus, we've spoken

with yourself, and it cares about the difficult situation for them, the lower than wages lower than

they should be, and haven't to jump through huge educational hoops to attain their qualifications.

How realistic is free early years education in the short term at least?

So we have an element of the so-called free preschool year, which is now two years,

or not two full years, because as parents will know, it runs for 38 weeks of the year.

So we do have that. It's a very important part of the broader system, if you like,

and certainly our members in Claire would describe it as the backbone of the early year system.

So we do have some, and that's exactly what happens in the so-called Nordic model,

it's a combination of investment, and as I said, people contribute, they're already

contributing to taxation and so on, but they pay a fee, there's a minimum fee and a maximum fee,

no matter how well, if you are everybody in an area knows that, and it all happens very smoothly,

money follows children, we don't have not the attendance rules, but possibly most important

of all, we have proper terms and conditions for staff, and that's the big issue that's blocking

our progress towards the Nordic model, towards building the capacity of the free preschool year,

and actually the wonderful program, and the other programs that our members roll out every day

to support families, including aim, including equal stars. So there's much more we could do,

we reached a brilliant threshold five years early in 2023 of 1 billion euro, we're about 1.34

billion euro. The problem we have is in GDP terms, that's not even 20% of what's being spent in

Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and so on. So we need government vision here, we need budget 2027

to be the turning point, and the first step, as early Child of Ireland has said to you before,

has said to your listeners before, and we know our members and Claire and across one store are behind us.

The first step needs to be raising pay, making it public, so that this parity between those hard

working educators who are walking in the doors of those 195 settings this morning, with their

colleagues and the world walking into schools, when they have the same kind of qualifications.

And with a reported staff turnover rate of 22% in this county, it's obvious that you've

touched on the reasons why people are leaving the sector in sufficient pay, chief amongst them,

is there still, I wonder, a perception out there, and you might pinpoint where it's coming from,

perhaps it's primarily the government, and it's an issue and element of this issue that we've

discussed before, even with yourself, Francis, that those working in the early years, Child of

Sector, the stillness elements are perception, incorrect perception of them being glorified

childminders, even though they are looking after and also guiding all of our children through the

most crucial formative years of their life. Well, I think I'm glad to say that the time when

educators were, you know, sort of described as babies, there's nothing wrong with baby sisters,

by the way, but in terms of their professional standing, I think they're behind us, however,

if you look on us, you know, how do we value, well, one of the things we do is we value people

by giving them relabels the living wage for doing important work. If we contrast the different

aspects of our care and education system, the only difference between the children who are going

into those 195 settings today and having a lovely happy Friday, and they'll run in the door,

again, on Monday, is their age, the only thing that distinguishes them from the children who are

going into primary school. So what early Child of Ireland is saying is that one of the ways you

lift the professional standing, the status of people, is to give them the same recognition as our

wonderful teachers in primary and secondary school receive and as they should, but you also do

things like guaranteed study leave, maternity leave, a pension from day one, and all of the things,

and you require DPD and all of the things that are required of teachers. And just to say, without

ever requiring us, when early Child of Ireland and our counterparts in other organizations, and indeed,

I know when things are put on by state agencies in the evenings, they get oversubscribed. This is

a 30,000 strong workforce that is already building its own professionalism and not to build on the

point you made about the public being ahead of the government when it comes to support for the

system. It's true that educators are well on their professionalization journey, keeping up with

the latest things that are good for children, all of the wonderful things that they study in their

own time. So they're keeping up with their professional journey with their continuous professional

development and government needs to catch up now with greater investment and prioritizing terms

and conditions. We know across the board that the qualifications and sustained relationships within

settings, in other words, people staying and not leaving is a huge indicator of high quality. And

that's what we want to see in early Child of Ireland. And that's what's being delivered in those

195 settings. So the government needs to be catching up with all of that and putting

its money where its mouth is. There's wonderful plans. And they need to be expedited. But the big

key here is greater investment and prioritizing terms and conditions for those 30,000 staff.

Okay, we do have to leave it there. My thanks to you, Francis Bernd Director of Policy at

Early Childhood Ireland. But I do want to bring in another guest on this important topic. And that

is Cahill Dylan, Cahill's with the Shannon Family Resource Center. Cahill, thanks for joining us

on morning focus. No problem, Alan. Thanks very much for having me. We spoke there with Francis

about the shortage of places and all the issues in relation to those working in the sector. The

earlier's graduates, the insufficient pain. We get to all of that in just a little while. But

on the ground in Shannon, what does this shortage of early years places actually look like for families

trying to find a place? I mean, Francis told us an anecdote of someone who was only at the

stage where they're trying to conceive already going around trying to find a place for their future

child. Yeah, that's common place in Shannon as well. And I've been in the role of Stanley

Support for her there since 2026 years. And you know, it was one of the first things in the job

was public health nurses contacting me who've been going to, you know, meet new mothers after

having a baby and looking for me to support them to try and identify a child care place in Shannon

for their child. And you know, it's been the same old stories for the last six years, really,

that's when I ring around, when I speak to the child care providers, when I look at the lists

that are available from like the care county child care community where there's registered

child minors and that's it's the reason enough for those individual people that are registered in

the area. But also when I even speak into one of the child care providers yesterday, you know,

they have a hundred people children in theirs in their crash bus another hundred on the wait list

and it's been like that and it's nearly a full time job for some of those child care providers that

are on their best to provide some spaces for families to just manage a wait list and constantly

you know, answer the phone to parents, where's my child on the list, is there any chance

on my pill to get the child into the ecc scheme when they're two years and nine months and

you know, even to try and get them in at that stage is a massive issue for a lot of families.

And I suppose an up and effect is what I see in my role as parents can't attend other supports

then for themselves, you know, they can't maybe even do things like go and do a driver

theory test or you know, learn to drive or upskill in other areas of their life that they'd like

to do because they don't have anyone to mind their child, you know, they can't go out to maybe

some mental health appointments, they can't, you know, go to their regular checkups and things

like that. It really has a- Or perhaps even hard, maybe some of them can't, yeah, maybe some of

them can't even work, it might affect their ability to work or return to work. Yeah, exactly,

it's across the board, it's every makeup of family, like it's not just, you know, single parents,

it's working families, it's trying to maybe have to only work on hybrid types of work that they

can do so maybe their partner works a couple of days, they work a couple of days and they manage

the child care between them, but it has a massive knock on effect on people, and so we struggled

in for a lot of lone parents, I suppose, as well, and separated families. I was at a meeting

the other day around infant mental health and, you know, it's the way the village, it takes a

village to raise a child, used to be one in 14 per child, it's one to four now to help support

a family. So, you know, times have changed in half a lot and it's the support that were there

before and all was available to people now to ask for help and to look for that support

when they need to attend something so it's a massive, massive issue and has been in

Shannon for a long time. And, you know, I know the government are thinking of

buying up some early child care facilities, but I haven't heard of where in Shannon, they might find

a space, but it's needed, it's not just in it, it's across the country. Yeah, and I know,

I know you and you're not alone in this are raising concerns about housing developments,

is that an issue called in Shannon when new estates are built without child care facilities,

that exacerbates the problem? Yeah, I tell the course and I know it was an old policy and

back then you had a lot of vacant child care facilities or so-called child care facilities left

in housing estates then with no later on, but it was just poorly taught out, it wasn't

the dots weren't chained with the plan and the department with the child care providers,

and I think that it needs to be really, you know, brought to the fore again, if you've got,

you know, 50 houses, but then look, 20 of those houses have families where they're going to need

child care. So, you know, to no brain or if there's a couple of new housing estates in Shannon,

it's the same up and down the country, you know, if this family's going into new houses,

which is great, you know, you've left people homeless, but then you also need to have that,

that knock on need for child care as well for those families and they're not there,

which are places just aren't there and it's the same and so I get every week, we don't have a place,

I'm sorry, I can't, we can't, we'll put your child in the list, but they may not get

a place that they're nearly ready for primary school. The zero capital funding for new child care

projects this year call in terms of local impact, will that see services locally struggling to

recruit or retain staff? Yeah, I would think so, I think so, like, you know, it's great to announce

that there's going to be some next year, maybe, but like, the need is there now and, you know,

there's child care providers that probably could open new places, if they had the capital fund,

and if there wasn't a building that they could move into, if there was a space that was suitable

for child care needs in the community, you know, a lot of these services need outdoor space,

they need park and they need, you know, you need a big building, you know, you need a big premises

to be able to provide the space for children. So, you know, without the capital investment,

without the buildings being found, but then you're going to struggle to manage.

The strong support in the findings for helping parents to stay home for the first year,

which, if possible, that could ease pressure on the system, or do you think could create new challenges?

No, I think, like, if parenting is on the most hardest jobs in the world, like,

and I'm sure there'd be lots of parents that would love to be able to afford to stay at home and

to put the, you know, put the time and the energy into bonding with their child and building

that relationship in the first year, which was very important. So, I do think that that would be

a good policy if it could be, if the money could be put there, you know.

Just to finish, Karl, if you had one message for the government for policy makers,

what would it be? What would you like to see brought in to ensure that the issues are sorted?

Well, that's what's, for instance, that's raised the one around, you know,

valuing the workers that are there as well at the current time and investing in them and making sure

that, you know, they're paid the right amount of money for their role, like, they're basically

standing parents, you know, if they're looking after a parent's child for three hours to seven or eight

hours a day, well, then, you know, what they're doing, the role of what parents are doing on the rest

of the time has to be valued as such, like, it's a huge, having that one good adult or a caregiver

that can really look out for your child and follow their needs and be there with all their feelings

and emotions throughout the day, a huge job and I think it needs to be valued more and they need

to be paid appropriately. And I suppose just having premises and having, you know, at more money

pumped into the system to be able to provide for spaces that are suitable for child care is very,

very important and needs to be worked on more. Okay, I have no doubt this is something we've covered

at many times on the show and we will do so again, but we'll park that there for the moment, Karl.

Thank you very much for being with us as well. Karl Dillon there from the Shannon Family Resource

Center.