More preschools close over lack of staff as Government urged to ‘completely rethink’ approach

Closures of early childhood education and care centres outnumbered those opening by four to one in the latest batch of figures from Tusla.

The Child and Family Agency recorded 50 closures of preschools and 12 new registrations over April to July this year, among a total of more than 4,000 early learning and care (ELC) services across the country.

A county-by-county breakdown shows that in Dublin, 14 services notified Tusla of their closure and three new services registered over those four months. In Cork, one signed up to open while three closed.

[ ‘It’s impossible to get staff’: Childcare sector remains in crisis, says preschool manager ]

However, the net loss of 46 ELC centres over the first seven months of this year is the lowest for five years, according to the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (DCEDIY). There were net reductions of between 71 and 78 services over the same period in each of the previous four years.

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Meanwhile, there has been a net increase of 72 in the number of stand-alone after-school services in January-July, bringing the total to 770. More than a third of the 4,027 ELC services in the State also provide after-school care.

“There are pockets of undersupply for certain cohorts of children, in particular for babies and toddlers and in certain areas,” the department said. . It said it monitors capacity on an ongoing basis, “with a particular focus on responding to the unmet needs of families”.

More than 106,000 children are estimated to be enrolled for the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) programme from this September. Department figures indicate overall capacity for these two years of pre-free school, for 3½ hours a day, 38 weeks of the year, is more than sufficient to cover the number of children eligible. They must be aged between two years and eight months and 5½ years.

The landscape of the ELC and school age care sector has been shifting since the start of the universal National Childcare Scheme in November 2019. That was followed by the introduction last September of core funding at a cost of €259 million, with an additional €28 million allocated for Year Two. This provided grants towards operators’ costs while demanding a freeze on fees, and subsidies were increased for parents availing of centre-based care and education for children aged from 24 weeks to 15 years.

The extent of the shortfall in capacity outside the ECCE programme is hard to gauge. Difficulties parents have in finding places depend on where they live, the age of their children and the hours they require, eg part-time or full-day care. Among the 73 ELC centres that have closed so far this year, 14 cited “not financially viable” as the reason, according to a department breakdown. No reason was given by 13 centres and the next most common reasons were retirement and inability to source staff.

[ Government urged to ‘completely rethink’ focus of childcare from needs of adults to children ]

However, there is no tracking of room closures within centres, which Frances Byrne, director of policy at Early Childhood Ireland, has described as a flaw in the data-gathering system. “The closure of baby rooms in particular needs to be tracked,” she said, adding that her organisation would also like to see the setting-up of a “rapid response team” to examine the circumstances and impact of any impending, or formally notified, centre closure.

In advance of Budget 2024, Early Childhood Ireland, the largest representative organisation of service providers, has called on the Government and policymakers to “completely rethink” their approach to early years and school-age care. For years the focus has been on facilitating parents’ access to the workforce, it said, rather than on the rights and needs of children in “the most formative educational experience children have”.

Grainne McKenna, assistant professor specialising in early childhood education at DCU, has raised concerns about “unintended consequences” of the State’s funding policies. These include smaller services “being gobbled up” by corporate childcare, she said.

“You could argue, why are public funds being used to generate bumper profits for large corporations and investment funds?” Meanwhile, some community-based settings that cater for the most vulnerable children have lost funding in the changeover to the National Childcare Scheme.

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The department said steps being taken to address issues of undersupply include the 30 city/county childcare committees across the country exploring possibilities for expansion of capacity among services. There is also a commitment to open the NCS to parents who use childminders, once Tusla regulation has been extended to childminders. Minister for Children Roderic O’Gorman has said he hopes this will happen before the end of 2024.

Owner of early childcare centre in Cavan: ‘This is the hardest year ever to try to find staff’

Scallywags Childcare in Virgina, Co Cavan would need to open two more “baby” rooms to clear its waiting list for children aged six months to two years, says owner Catherine Keenan, but there is no space to expand. It can cater for 56 children in total and most are full-day care. Another creche in the area has closed its room for the younger-age cohort because it was not economically viable and she believes there is a widespread shortage of places for the under-twos.

It is a different story for the ECCE, for which there seems to be ample capacity for 2023/24. However, parents “panicked” by talk of shortages in early childhood services have reportedly been putting their children’s names down for several different centres, just in case.

“We have been telling parents for the last six months that we are full and have no places for September,” says Ms Keenan, who operates two other centres in Navan, Co Meath. Yet within the past fortnight they, and other services, have experienced an unprecedented volume of cancellations in children taking ECCE places.

Parents have made their choices at the last minute, despite previous confirmations and centres having registered the children for the scheme. The loss of modest deposits does not seem to worry parents, she says. She has even been told two children with additional needs, for whom a specialist worker was lined up under the access and inclusion model, are no longer starting. Services will be paying staff wages while their ECCE rooms are operating at a loss unless they can fill the places.

Providers’ “big gripe” with the Government over ECCE, she explains, is that it is only funded for 38 weeks yet centres must pay staff for 42 weeks “because everybody is entitled to four weeks’ holidays”.

Ms Keenan has been in the business 20 years and says “this is the hardest year ever to try to find staff”. Low pay scales reflect what the early year services get from the Government “but they need to be more in line with schoolteachers’ pay. I am hearing a lot of places are having to close rooms because they don’t have the staff.”

Going by the phone calls she gets and the number of new housing estates being built, Ms Keenan is in no doubt that more early years services are needed in the Meath/Cavan region. The problem is the new core units coming on the market are just too expensive, “unless you are a corporate chain”, she says.

Meanwhile, Evelyn Reilly of kidz@play in Maynooth, Co Kildare, says they have seen a significant increase in parents looking for full-day or part-time care added on to the ECCE programme.

She attributes this to the higher subsidies for parents, as well being in a commuter area where many families have both parents working.

While kidz@play has expanded its full-day-care spaces in response, it has had to close its ECCE and after-school service in Kilcock due to losing its premises within a primary school where pupil numbers had increased. Ms Reilly says being unable to locate an alternative, affordable space has reduced the services it can offer.

Although kidz@play never catered for babies and toddlers, it is currently receiving many queries for this age care, she adds.