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Minister Andrews replies on Pre-School Childcare Scheme commencement date |
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Friday, 15 May 2009 10:08 |
DÁIL Question addressed to the Minister of State at the Department of Health and Children (Mr. Andrews) - by Deputy Finian McGrath
For WRITTEN ANSWER on 28/04/2009
Question: New pre-school childcare scheme details and commencement date.
REPLY
As the Deputy will be aware I have responsibility for the implementation of the new scheme to provide a free Pre-School year of Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) which was announced recently by the Minister of Finance.
The scheme will allow children to avail of a free playschool place in their pre-school year, which will be provided for 3 hours per day, 5 days per week for 38 weeks. It will also allow children in their pre-school year who are attending a full or part-time day daycare service to avail of a free session of 2 hours and 15 minutes per day, 5 days per week for 50 weeks. As the new scheme will be introduced from January next, the first full year will be from September 2010 and children availing of the scheme in January 2010 will have a reduced period of free pre-school provision.
Participating children must, normally be aged between 3 years 3 months and 4 years 6 months on the 1st September of each year. Exceptions will be allowed where children have special needs or it is necessary to accept children at an older age due to the enrolment policy of the local primary school. Participating services will receive capitation of €64.50 per week where children attend for 38 weeks, and €48.50 where they attend for 50 weeks of the year. Services will receive payments at the start of each term. Where the child is attending full-day or part-time childcare, the service will be required to reduce the childcare fees by the amount of the capitation.
The scheme will be open to almost 5,000 private and voluntary pre-school services and officials in my Office will be writing to these by the end of May 2009 to provide further details and to advise them of the application process. Pre-School leaders will be expected to have a qualification in childcare to FETAC level 5 or 6 qualifications, or equivalent or to be in the process of completing their qualification. All services will be required to provide an educational programme consistent with the principles of Síolta and appropriate to the age of participating children. A national team of Síolta co-ordinators will assist services in meeting these standards.
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I am a mother of two school going children aged 5 and 7 and having completed a fetac level five quailification started back to work last september .the hours worked perfectly around caring for my children and i could claim my stamps for the summer.now my boss is closing her buisness as she cannot pay back her buisness loan,pay insurance ,heating lighting etc and pay me with the ridiculous payment per child the goverement have come up with.i am now seeking work but as i would not earn enough contibutions to claim my stamps to care for my children during the summer what is the point in staying in the industry. i agree it needs regulating but there is no point in people training if the pay is not more than minimum wage .i love working with chuildren but as it stands will be unable to continue in this field as i cannot afford to.i am a loss as i am fantastic at my job.pity the stupid person behind the desk did not liase with the people in the industry who would have pointed out the faults in the proposel