Munich: Playgroups for children need skilled workers – Munich


Put one to three year old children in the crèche all day, five days a week? What seems sensible to many parents or is necessary for professional reasons is less suitable for other families. They often prefer a concept that has long been successfully practiced in the settlement on Ackermannbogen.

The Breznbande, the Olympiazwergerl and the Ackermännlein, as the playgroups are called in the newly built district south of the Olympic Park, were founded 16 years ago. Eight children each visit these groups on two or three mornings in order, as Heidrun Eberle from the neighborhood exchange puts it, “to sniff out with their peers”. At the same time, the parents can get to know each other – and build friendships that often outlast the child’s care hours. “These groups”, knows Eberle, “are also an important supplementary offer for the still missing day nursery places in Schwabing-West”.

The meeting leader and the parents therefore find a demand that the youth welfare office has recently been raising all the more incomprehensible. “Parent-organized playgroups”, it is said in a letter from the authority to the groups, “need an educational specialist” – an educator or social worker. Only in this way would they “meet the requirements of the Munich Agreement on child protection”. Such a force must therefore be discontinued by the end of August. Otherwise, the funding requirements did not apply.

An absurdity for Eberle. “The leader of our playgroups is not a trained pedagogue. But she is a mother herself and does it great.” Parents cherished and children loved Norelis Sanchez. Supervision at the Ackermannbogen includes a maximum of three hours per play group, and according to Eberle, the entitlement to skilled workers was only valid from a supervision period of eleven hours. “But now that the subject of child protection has been given such high priority, it suddenly seems that such care no longer suffices.” Child protection is of course important and well meant, says Eberle. “But in my opinion, this demand from the youth welfare office overshoots the mark.” Apart from that, Eberle does not know where the Ackermannbogen Association is supposed to find an educator at all. “There are simply no qualified specialists on the job market, especially not for a few hours a week.”

The association therefore urgently requests that the authorities withdraw their requirements. He receives support from the Schwabing-West district committee and the day care center association (KKT).

Care has been working well for years

“As an umbrella organization, the KKT has been campaigning for the interests of childcare organized by parents themselves in Munich for almost 50 years,” explains Ursula Baumgartner from the KKT Board of Directors. For playgroups like the one at Ackermannbogen, she knows, an operating permit is not even necessary. “And in the past, it was always possible in such groups to look after the children with suitable people who have no formal qualifications.” Especially since these caregivers “always took part in the numerous educational training offers of the KKT”, including special ones on child protection.

“Why this should or must suddenly be different after many years of well-functioning work is also incomprehensible to us,” criticizes Baumgartner. Neither has there been an incident since the playgroups existed that one could say that one had to readjust. This topic has never been discussed at the regular meetings between the KKT, the youth welfare office and the department for education and sport. “

However, the six playgroups across the city with a total of 60 seats that would be affected by this new regulation “are all startled and don’t know what to do,” says Baumgartner. The day care center association has therefore already contacted the youth welfare office.

It is emphasized there that the specifications are not new. “That a pedagogical specialist and an additional pedagogical worker should be active in all playgroups of parent-child initiatives that are subsidized by the Munich City Youth Welfare Office is already in the funding requirements for 2019,” explains Edith Petry, deputy press spokeswoman for the social department. Only now “in the course of a restructuring of the specialist department for parent-organized playgroups in the city youth welfare office, administrative processes and fundamental issues such as child protection have been gradually checked”. And it just turned out that six playgroups did not employ any educational specialists.

Nevertheless: It is, says Petry, “in the express interest of the city youth welfare office to keep these childcare places in the playgroups concerned”. Therefore, the authority is “ready to start a pilot project with the KKT for the affected playgroups”. The requirement is a “hotline”: At the KKT, someone specifically for child protection issues should be available at any time during the opening hours of the playgroups. In order to be able to support and advise in acute cases. “We are negotiating how to ensure that,” explains Baumgartner. In addition, the small day care center association must revise the existing advisory concept again – in order to meet the concerns of the youth welfare office.

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