Free childcare for families with jobless parents proposed

A proposal to extend free childcare services for under three-year-olds, irrespective of their parents’ employment status, is part of holistic strategy from government to tackle early leaving from education (ELET) and training in Malta.

Free childcare in Malta was a flagship social reform by the newly-elected Labour government in 2013, with the percentage of under-3s in childcare shooting up from just 11% in 2014 to 31% in 2016 – the largest increase in such a cohort enrolled in formal childcare in the EU.

Currently free childcare is available to all families where both parents work – but is not provided in cases where only one parent works.

Parents are presently allowed to send their children to a childcare centre of their choice, and benefit from free childcare “equivalent to the hours worked by the parent with the lower workload, plus one hour extra for commuting”, a measure that aims to create an incentive for mothers to return to work or to remain in formal employment.

But in the last general election, a proposal by the Nationalist Party to extend free childcare to all families, including those whose parents are not in employment was shot down by the Labour Party as one encouraging welfare dependency.

Instead Labour pledged to extend childcare services in the evening for those who work at night or are attending full-time courses, a proposal now also being considered in a consultation document on national standards for early childhood education.

Extending free childcare to all is now seen as a preventive measure in addressing early school-leaving, along with providing alternative pathways for children and targeted measures to redress educational disadvantage at an early age.

The consultation proposes that access to free childcare is extended to all children within the target age range. “Eligibility should not be restricted to children whose parents are in employment or education as this prevents access to many of those most in need and most likely to benefit from the free childcare services.”

Presently children whose parents are not socioeconomically active or in education are excluded from the Free Childcare Scheme, and have reduced access hours to Klabb 3-16 and Skolasajf, “despite being most in need of additional support”

The Free Childcare Scheme is considered as “an example of system-wide preventative measures to combat early school leaving”, with the document calling that it be extended to all children in the target age group.

Before the 2017 general election the Labour Party had warned that the Nationalist Party’s proposal to extend free childcare to unemployed parents was unsustainable, with then education minister Evarist Bartolo describing it as unjust to working parents who pay taxes, and warning against reintroducing a mentality of reliance on social benefits.

“The free childcare scheme introduced by this government was intended to encourage more people to find a job, so as to improve their family income and therefore their personal satisfaction,” he said. “Our policy was to make it worth it for people to find a job instead of relying on social benefits.”

But even back then, experts like Anna Borg, director of the University of Malta’s Centre for Labour Studies argued that universal childcare for all children helped to mitigate social inequalities and break the circle of poverty.

Borg pointed out that free childcare can help address children’s living conditions in at-risk households with outcomes felt at later stages by minimising the number of early school-leavers and facilitating social mobility, noting that current eligibility criteria forfree childcare may be excluding the most vulnerable children.

Night-time childcare

Another consultation document on National Standards for Early Childhood Education and
Care Services, is also proposing the provision of childcare at night between 10pm and 5am.

This proposal is being made in response to recent developments in the Maltese economy in general and the role of women in the labour market.  The night service provision between 10pm and 5 am aims to cater for families, where either both parents in the case of families with two parents or the parent in the case of single parent families, are in regulated employment which overlaps with night service provision hours and who have no other suitable arrangements for the care of their children.