Budget offering for childcare sector 'a disaster'
Averil Sheehan, proprietor of Care-a-Lot Childcare creche in Innishannon, Co Cork said: "You can be sure of one thing — providers will not be happy with this.” Picture: Dan Linehan
Innishannon-based childcare provider Averil Sheehan says that the Department of Children’s budget offering is nothing short of “a disaster”, and decried the fact no benefit will be delivered to providers for another 12 months.
“We were looking for €100m to increase the ECCE (Early Childhood Care and Education scheme) capitation. We’re getting €44m and we’ll have to wait until September for any increase,” she says.
“Social welfare recipients don’t have to wait. So they know the cost of inflation and its impacts, yet struggling providers get nothing. There is no urgency. Why?”
By Averil’s calculations, the service she owns and runs, Care-A-Lot Childcare, will benefit to the tune of €8.70 per week. “That’s nothing, and it shows that the protest (when several thousand childcare workers assembled outside the Dáil last month) had zero effect on the minister. You can be sure of one thing — providers will not be happy with this,” she said.
Before the budget, Averil had said that if she and others in her line of work were “not looked after” in the announcement then a lot of them “would have to make some very hard decisions”.
She says that she has wound up “deflated, cross, and robbing Peter to pay Paul” because of the poor manner in which the Government’s key childcare policy, core funding, has been planned and implemented.
“For years I ran a successful, profitable childcare centre. Since I signed up to core funding two years ago, I’m having to rob Peter to pay Paul to stay afloat. How is that right? All because of a poorly planned ill-advised policy coming from the Department of Children,” she says.
Averil says that staff recruitment and retention is “a nightmare” at present, a sentiment echoed by many such providers across the country.
“I advertised for six months to try and recruit a full-time staff member recently only to receive one CV from South America, a girl that wasn’t even in the country,” Averil says.
“I needed her yesterday not in two or three months' time. I finally got sorted but it nearly broke me.”
Many providers will have to make some very hard decisions as a result of the budget, she says. For her, it will mean one of two options.
“I either close my doors for good displacing over 80 different families that use my centre, or I come off all (State) schemes and increase my parental fees by 25%-30% and see how that goes. But that totally undermines the idea of core funding. I welcome the principle, but it needs and needed to see increased funding to make me viable.”
She says that prospect “scares” her given the investment that she has put into the business over recent years.
"This has brought a lot of trouble to my door. And what do I do if I close my doors? What can I go into? I’ve only ever known childcare, and I’m really good at what I do, I know I am.
“Over 13 years I have made a profit each and every year growing from year one. Nothing major but I never wanted to become a millionaire out of the business.
“Only time will tell where my fate lies now though,” she says.
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