Government proposal to encourage home care for children raises storm

Children of low-income parents not to be entitled to free full-day day care

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Opposition Members of Parliament opposition, and a group representing single parents, were angered on Thursday by a government plan to scrap full-time day care for the children of low-income parents.
      The government decided in discussions on Wednesday that a minimum fee would be imposed on full-day day care. Now day care is free for the children of the poorest parents.
      The size of the minimum fee was not yet decided. The change is to come into effect from the beginning of 2008.
      The government wants to encourage parents who are at home all day to keep their children in home care, or to place them in part-time day care, which will remain free for those with the lowest incomes.
     
During Parliamentary Question Time, opposition MPs voiced fears that the government was trying to chip away at the subjective right to day care, and that the measures would have their most serious impact on those with the lowest incomes. Tuula Haatainen (SDP) said that single parents would probably suffer the most.
      Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen (Centre) and Social Services Minister Paula Risikko (Nat. Coalition Party) said that this would not happen. Vanhanen noted that exceptions can be made to the minimum fee.
      Risikko said that the concerns would be taken into account when the ministers iron out the details of the plan in the autumn.
     
The number of children in full-time day care, whose parents have been relieved of paying day care fees is somewhere between 13,000 and 19,000. The parents are mostly students, part-time, or low-income workers, unemployed or single parents.
      Bodil Rosengren, chair of the League of Single Parents and parents with joint custody, said that she was "completely shocked" at the proposed changes. Currently about 40 per cent of the children of single parents who are in day care have had their fees waived.
     
"How can single parents who are students pay day cares fee out of their student grants?" Rosengren asked.
      The unemployed, meanwhile, need to be able to accept a new job at short notice. Rosengren says that an unemployed single parent could fail to get a job if the child does not have a place for day care.
      "The employment situation of single parents has deteriorated, and poverty has increased. Now we are going in a worse direction", Rosengren said.
      The government plans to increase child allowances by EUR 10 a month next year.
      Bodil Rosengren notes that this will not help the poorest single parents, because higher child allowances decrease the amount of income support that is available.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Government wants to encourage fathers to stay at home to care for children (11.5.2007)
  Survey: Child care leave is risk for woman´s return to labour market (9.1.2007)

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