Childcare: No such thing as a free lunch

The free childcare initiative is one of the more praiseworthy ideas which have been implemented in this legislature, and which (contrary to some other ideas I could mention) has, at its heart, the concept of social justice.

Basically, through this scheme, children can be placed in any childcare centre of their choice, and the government will foot the bill. The idea is to get more women back into the workforce, thus contributing to the economy, while making it worth their while to do so, because they are not spending all their hard-earned pay cheques on paying for childcare.

The thing is, of course, whenever there is a service which comes for free, it often gives people the idea that there is no cost incurred at all, and everything is magically paid for by that omnipotent, money-is-no-problem entity called il-gvern. Of course what they fail to register is that il-gvern is, in fact, us. The money has to come from somewhere and it is coming from the taxes we pay.

The scheme was welcomed by parents, and women in particular, who let’s face it, are often the ones who have to give up their careers to raise the children. From what I’ve heard, childcare facilities could not cope with the demand and there were waiting lists everywhere, which is very understandable. It’s free - who would not want something so convenient, which is free?

However, things have come to a head because, of course, children do get sick very frequently, especially when they first start going to school, and you cannot just pack your child off to daycare with a runny nose and cough. In fact, there have even been Health Department PSA’s telling parents to keep their children home to avoid spreading germs. What is happening now is that parents whose children are absent once too often are now receiving bills to compensate for the number of days lost, since the childcare has been booked in advance.

As explained by Clyde Caruana, chairman, Employment andTraining Corporation, Ħal Far in a letter to the press:

“The efficiency and effectiveness of a service which is provided free of charge implies responsibilities on both the government and users.

“While the former is expected to provide a service which provides for the needs of the cohort it is aimed to address, the users have the responsibility to adhere to the regulations which curtail abuse. If parents overbook more hours than necessary or if the absent and sickness thresholds are exceeded (25 per cent of hours booked), then that would result in a wasted cost in unutilised services for the government and hours of childcare services which could have been used to accommodate other children.

“One is to note that 83.3% of parents using childcare did not exceed the entitled sickness balance. It is to be further clarified that hospital interventions’ certificates are accepted as a justification for sickness.

“Bills received by parents exceeding the established threshold are accounted for and explained.

“The government is committed to ensure it provides fair and quality services to the public while regulating any form of abuse.”

Meanwhile in Parliament Education Minister Evarist Bartolo said it was the childcare centres and not the government that were issuing the bills. According to the information tabled by Mr Bartolo, 848 children exceeded the absence allowance.

But as always there is the other side of the coin: parents who say they are receiving hefty bills of €1,000 and more and who are obviously up in arms at having to pay such exorbitant fees for a service which had been promoted as being ‘free’. The thing is, in order to run up a bill of €1,000, the number of days in which the child was not sent to school obviously outweigh the number of days which the child has actually attended. It seems to me that the child would have basically barely attended at all. There can be no other explanation.

What has clearly happened is that some parents have been lulled into a false sense of security by hearing the word ‘free’ and have failed to take into consideration that somewhere along the line the private childcare centres are being paid actual money for providing this service. If it was made very clear at the beginning that there would be a ‘penalty’ for failing to send the children X number of times (which I am assuming it was), then it seems to me that they should have foreseen that they would have to pay up. The number of absent days which are allowed seem quite reasonable enough to me.

Some comments I’ve read have described it as a “cunning” calculated way of forcing parents to pay up since everyone knows that young children spread germs easily and that many of the pre-booked days would inevitably be lost. However, the decision to use this service is a choice which parents have consciously made – and sometimes one makes a choice and it turns out not to be that advantageous after all. But that’s true of most things in life, isn’t it?

While I can understand the shock of receiving a huge bill, one must also appreciate that there has to be some kind of deterrent in place in order to curb abuse, because human nature being what it is, “free services” always end up being inevitably taken advantage of to the detriment of others.

This happens all the time with many of the free services which are available in Malta, starting from our hospital where people persist in showing up at the Emergency Department even though theirs is plainly not an emergency. Little do members of the public realize that by doing so they are straining the resources of our only national hospital for frivolous things when they are sorely needed for real, dire emergencies instead.

There will probably come a time when showing up at the hospital with a non-emergency cases will also be penalized – and I can just hear the uproar now.