Ms Claire Woods:

I thank the committee for the invitation to appear. I am joined by my colleague, Mr. Eugene Waters. We represent the 30 national city and county child care committees, CCCs, throughout the country. We welcome the opportunity to bring forward our views on the new single affordable child care scheme to be introduced this year. The CCCs welcome the introduction of this national scheme, which will provide much needed financial support towards the cost of child care for parents. The targeted supports in the scheme for working parents will help remove one of the barriers to employment for many parents. Parents who qualify for these supports will have access to subsidised wraparound care on an annual basis. This will enable eligible parents to choose and plan the best care for their children for up to a maximum of 40 hours per week over 52 weeks.

The universal supports are a welcome intervention for parents who are not in employment. The new scheme recognises in particular the importance of child care services for children under the age of three. The parental choice aspect of the scheme ensures parents have freedom to choose the best care for their children whether it be a structured full day care service or a child minder in the home-care setting. The shift in the nature of eligibility will provide access to subsidised child care for many working families with low income levels who do not qualify for support under the current programmes such as the community childcare subvention, CCS, scheme and the training and education childcare, TEC, subsidy.

The streamlining of eligibility criteria will benefit both parents and child care providers. The benefit to parents in work or education will be that eligibility will be based on one clear process for one scheme instead of the current process, which uses a set of complex criteria for each programme, CCS, the child care employment and training support, CETS and TEC. CCS eligibility is based on the parent being in receipt of a social welfare payment. CETS eligibility is based on the course the parent is attending being recognised by the education and training boards, ETBs, as eligible for the subsidy. We expect this change to determining eligibility will greatly reduce the levels of administration for the child care providers, given that they will be required to have only one fee policy as opposed to one for each programme, which is the current practice.

While the new scheme will cater for existing programme users and bring a new cohort of working parents into subsidy benefit, there will be a small cohort of vulnerable children who will no longer qualify for subsidy support. In particular, children whose parents are unemployed and currently availing of vital early intervention supports from community child care provision. It is important that such cases are explored further to mitigate any possible negative impact on the welfare and outcomes for such children. An example is stand-alone community after school services in areas of high disadvantage. These services provide key intervention supports to primary school children helping meet their educational and social needs. Head 5 of the new scheme allows for Tusla to support children on child welfare or child protection grounds. Some of the children using the services will fall outside of Tusla’s threshold but most definitely require support.

CCI recommend policymakers consider alternative supports for these child care services providing supports to vulnerable families. Our UK neighbours operate targeted supports direct to early years services which are providing essential early intervention to vulnerable children. This type of support is not new to Ireland. Before the introduction of the current child care programmes, community services received block funding from the HSE to ensure that child care places were available to vulnerable families in need of support. These children were usually referred by the HSE team, for example social workers, community workers and public health nurses. Today, we have the Meitheal programme within the Child and Family Agency that is committed to supporting families where there would be a child welfare or safety concern. This service could be a vehicle for identifying the child care needs of a family and making a referral to support the child's access to the child care service.

CCI expects to provide an increased level of support to child care services in the area of financial advice and support during the transition phase of this new scheme. This will be necessary to ensure services can sustain themselves and remain open in light of the fluctuation in child enrolments as we move from a snapshot enrolment core funding model to the funding following the child based on parental income. The CCCs have well established systems in place to provide this type of support. For example, our recent work with community services to address the issues of reliance on community employment staff, supports this.

Members will have heard from some sectoral groups the call for support for parents to be assisted with online applications to the new scheme. These supports are already in place through the CCC structure. My colleague, Mr. Eugene Waters, will elaborate further on the supports provided by CCCs.