Thousands of parents in the city are worried about whether they will be able to afford care for their children in the future. This Wednesday, the Munich City Council will finally decide in its general assembly how its subsidies will be distributed in the future and how high the fees will be. The previous funding system for independent daycare centers failed in court, and the new model was fought over until the very end.
The coalition of the Greens/Pink List and SPD/Volt is now making improvements at the last minute and wants to grant all participating daycare centers a higher flat rate for administration costs. But there are further concerns among independent providers. That’s why it remained unclear until recently how many daycare providers would take part in the new funding model, the so-called deficit compensation system.
For example, there are disagreements on the topic of lunch. “There is a massive unequal treatment between municipal and independent daycare centers,” says Manuela Sauer from the Paritätischer Wohlfahrtsverband. This could lead to significantly higher meal contributions. “But every child in Munich must be worth the same.” If the general assembly decides to cover the administrative costs and subsidize lunch, then the Arbeiterwohlfahrt (Awo) will “probably” take advantage of the future funding, says managing director Julia Sterzer. Only after the decision in the city council can one realistically assess how to plan further, says Andrea Betz, spokeswoman for the Diakonie board. “In principle, all costs incurred for running a daycare center must be subsidized.”
“We are taking another step towards welfare associations and parent-child initiatives,” says Green Party parliamentary group leader Sebastian Weisenburger. The Green-Reds continued to negotiate an improvement in the food subsidy until Tuesday evening. His colleague from the SPD, Anne Hübner, also believes that more is not possible under the legal conditions. “We found the best of many bad solutions,” she says. For around 90 percent of parents, nothing would change in terms of price and quality of care. In their opinion, the very large cost explosions that private providers are currently threatening will remain the exception.
The new funding model will compensate for the deficit in independent daycare centers. The city provides around 170 million euros per year for this purpose. To do this, the institutions must commit to participating in the new system. This comes into force on September 1st, and registration for the first round of daycare place allocation runs until March 13th. However, many parents currently do not know what costs they will incur. This depends crucially on whether your daycare center takes part in the new system.
Many private providers reject the model
There are around 1,530 daycare centers in Munich with more than 106,000 childcare places. 460 of these are municipal daycare centers, they offer around 43,800 places; 1,070 facilities are operated by various independent providers and offer 62,400 places. These include the parent-child initiatives with 5,600 places in 230 facilities and the daycare centers run by non-profit providers, private, church or welfare associations, with 485 facilities and 38,500 childcare places. There are also 350 private-commercial daycare centers with around 18,300 childcare places.
While there are signs that the large social organizations will participate under certain conditions, many private sector organizations reject the new model as too complex and inadequate. Some have already announced in letters to parents that the fees will therefore rise significantly – in some daycare centers to 960 euros for seven to eight hours of care in the crèche and lunch; for a kindergarten place, for example, it would be 580 euros. Some are even more expensive, with up to 1,200 euros being charged for a daycare place from September onwards. Anyone who cannot pay the high care costs can apply for so-called economic youth welfare up to a certain income limit.
For example, the parents of seven of the 21 facilities in the Denk-mit-Kita chain, which belong to the private daycare provider Babilou Family, have already been informed. They now know that their daycare centers will not participate in the new funding model and that parent fees will rise sharply. The daycare center’s letter to parents states, among other things: “Since only part of the costs are offset and the cost cap predefined by the city of Munich does not take the actual costs into account, independent providers cannot work economically and bear a high entrepreneurial risk. It No reserves can be created and the long-term, comprehensive financing of our daycare centers would be at risk.” The remaining think-with-daycare centers plan to join the new funding model.
At the private daycare provider Infanterix, two facilities will continue to operate without municipal funding from September, while the remaining daycare centers are to join the new municipal funding model. It is already the case that not all Munich facilities from the same daycare provider are subsidized through the Munich funding formula; the prices are not uniform.
Last week, worried and angry parents demonstrated in downtown Munich; 500 mothers and fathers came. They called for fair daycare funding for all children. Parents are calling for a second demonstration this Wednesday from 8 a.m. on Marienplatz when the city councilors come to the general meeting.