Lack of tax relief for childcare is increasingly pushing childminders and their charges into the black economy, reports Kathryn Holmquist in her continuing series

By KATHRYN HOLMQUIST

"PARENTS are rarely overjoyed about their childminders," observes Patricia Murray, chairperson of the Irish Childminders Association which registers childminders and runs training courses - all on a voluntary basis.

"The notion that we are a country of happy working parents with our happy childminders is not true. There is a huge amount of resentment from parents who are cavalier and who do not want to know what is happening to their children while they are out working," she says.

It's very important for the child that there is an atmosphere of communication between the childminder and mother, who are the two central characters in the child's life. Unfortunately, it is pretty common that the relationship is fraught with tension. Often, the mother thinks that the childminder should be grateful because she has nothing better to do," says Ms Murray.

I understand why they feel that way; they are operating both from guilt, because deep down they fear that they should not be leaving their children at all, and from an attitude of resentment that they have to pay for childcare out of their after tax income, leaving most working mothers very little net income to contribute to the mortgage."

Ms Murray believe at the root cause of these poor relationships between parents = and childminders is the low status=afforded the job by the Government and society at large.

Since 1983, when a government =working group on childcare first recommended 100 per cent tax relief for parents paying childcare fees, successive governments have disregarded the issue. The low status of the childcare profession means that it isn't regarded as a real job by the government, much less as something as worthy of tax relief as a car or even a fax machine. The CSO doesn't even count childcare workers among its statistics and the Revenue Commissioner classes childminders as "domestics".

Noirin Hayes, psychologist and head of the school of social sciences at the Dublin Institute of Technology, where 40 childcare professionals are trained each year, believes that the low status of childcare workers is the main barrier preventing hard pressed parents and struggling nurseries and creches from getting the subsidies and tax relief they need.

There is no doubt about it that if you are paying for your childcare out of taxed income, you are trying to minimise your costs, you are bringing it into the black economic area and it is giving a message as to how we really value our children," says Hayes.

Despite its low status, being left with "the woman down the road" is a key formative influence for tens of thousands of pre school children cared for by an estimated 15,000 childminders. Go into any private suburban housing estate and two out of three houses will be empty, with the one in the middle housing the childminder and the children of the people who live on either side, says Ms Murray.

"Children are left from 8 a.m. until 6 p.m. on average in the outer suburbs," says Ms Murray. "It's a long full day and how good the childminder is has serious implications. It's a very different situation than a play group. An indifferent playgroup for a few hours will not damage a child".

It will not be positive but it won't be negative either. But spending 12 hours a day with an indifferent childminder who is not very communicative and is not giving them the interaction they need is a big loss for that child.

Children can grow up to be resentful and badly behaved because they are being cared for by someone who is not meeting their needs. If an infant's needs are not being responded to, that will result in serious behaviour problems when the child is 15 years old. You cannot meet a child's needs for good, early nurturing and interaction at 15, the time has gone by," she says.

Section VII of the 1991 Childcare Act will require childminders caring for more than three children under the age of six, other than their own children, to register with their local health boards. However, childminders caring for three or fewer children under the age of six (other than their own children) will be excluded from the legislation.

"The exclusion of childminders caring for three or fewer children under the age of six is terrible," believes Murray, a member of the committee which drew up the guidelines for the new legislation. Parents are not getting quality assurance through this new legislation. All childminders should have to notify with the health board, as they do in Northern Ireland and the UK. By and large it should be public and supervised."

MS Murray suspects that the Government was being pragmatic when it decided to exclude childminders caring for three preschool children or less from the legislation. It all has to do with the black economy and the vested interest which our political leaders have in seeing childcare remain a hazy, undervalued and unregulated area.

"If they were to register and be regulated, childminders married to taxpayers would almost inevitably be charged 48 per cent tax. If they were forced to declare their income", Ms Murray says, "their husbands would put a stop to them minding children because it would not be worthwhile." And then, we would be in an even worse crisis as thousands of childminders would withdraw their services.

The Government's refusal to introduce tax relief for parents paying childcare fees has another angle too. Poor pay is endemic in the childcare industry and no one in Government appears to want to do anything about it.

I have heard horror stories of people being paid as little as £1 per hour. There are no standard pay grades for childcare in the private sector. For the most part these employers are self employed people setting up creches on their own and it is all very ad hoc," says Bernard Harbor, PRO of IMPACT.

Parents struggle to pay their childminders and creches out of after tax income and for them, the fees may seem a real burden while for the person at the receiving end, it may be barely a living wage. Ms Murray says that many parents expect to spend £50 per 50 hour week per child on a childminder, in contrast to the ICA's recommended rate of £70 per child per 40 hour week, plus £2.10 for each additional hour.

Agencies report that parents should expect to pay a childminder or nanny working in their own home a gross wage of £110-150 plus PRSI for a 40 hour week. Childminders may earn as little as £60 a week on the black market, however, if with the complicity of their employers, they also draw unemployment benefit. Nadine Chettner of the childminders agency. Freedom for You, says this is ill advised.

Paying PRSI is an important safeguard both for the childminder, who is then eligible for State sickness benefit, and for the parents since childminders= whose RSI numbers are registered cannot be claiming the dole as well," she says. Yet parents have to pay PRSI out of income on which they have already paid PRSI once.

Parents paying a fee to a creche may not wonder what the staff are earning, but they should if they are genuinely interested in the quality of a nursery, advises Martina Murphy of the National Creche and Nursery Association. Trained personnel in creches and nurseries may earn as little as £90 a week, although good nurseries will pay £120-£150 a week, which is still well below the average industrial wage of £275 a week.

"If a nursery does not pay a decent wage, their turn over will be high, which is not good for the children. The atmosphere and the quality of care would reflect how happy the staff are. If there is a high turnover, parents should question why," says Ms Murphy.

LOW pay, low status and the notion that childminding is a job that anyone can do is contradicted by the efforts of childcare workers themselves to become educated in early childhood development. The Dublin Institute of Technology offers a popular two year certificate course, a growing number of post Leaving Cert students are taking the one year childcare courses offered by the NCVA (National Council for Vocational Awards) and growing numbers of childminders and nannies are getting British qualifications through the UK's NNEB (Nursery Nurses Education Board) and City & Guilds. A variety of private colleges and VECs are also offering courses, although there are still no national Irish guidelines for training.

Despite the training available, trained people are hard to find, particularly by parents looking for childminders to work in their own homes. The low status reputation of the job means that many people choose it because they cannot do anything else.

"There are a lot of unqualified people available who want to work as childminders," says Nadine Chettner. "We interview them and as part of the screening process we look at their personality to see if they have the right temperament. A course is good to have, but when it comes down to it what you really want are good references and the right personality. They have to be patient, loving and kind and they need a certain serenity."

If you can find that special untrained person who is naturally great with children, you're lucky. Too often, however, the parents lack the interviewing skills or the mind reading abilities or even the luck to find such a person. They go from crisis to crisis, from one failed childminding arrangement to the next trying live ins, live outs, au pairs and so on.

It is not unusual to meet parents who make outrageous demands, expecting, for example, to find a qualified childminder who will care for two toddlers while keeping the house clean and also having a three course meal ready for the parents when they return in the evening, Ms Chettner adds.

Seeing childminders, creche workers and nannies as slave labour may be convenient for the Government and for some parents, but, as they have said, the experts are in no doubt that being cared for by slave labour is bad for children.