Studying with Child

Of course, the legal regulations during the lock-down period also had a strong impact on the work in the Kita department. The business year was a balancing act between three poles:

• The establishment of and compliance with the legal hygiene regulations along the respective changing guidelines.
• Establishing emergency childcare for parents who urgently need a place for their child during the pandemic, and
• Protecting our own staff.

We did not always fully succeed in this balancing act and due to staff shortages we had to accept reductions in childcare hours and also partial closures.

The initiative of our largest daycare centre in Landau - the Villa Unibunt - was very pleasing, as it countered the lock-down with a virtual daycare centre under the label "KiCoKa - Kinder-Corona-Kanal". On KiCoKa, the children could participate virtually in the daily life of the daycare centre and maintain a connection to it. The educators made their own handicrafts, sang, read aloud, presented games and told stories about everyday life at the daycare centre. Almost 70 films were made during this time, which were broadcast on YouTube as a non-public channel. Since the feedback from our parents and children was consistently positive, we are thinking about continuing the format outside of the pandemic for special occasions. Unfortunately, the production of the videos is quite time-consuming, which is difficult to manage during normal operations with the current staffing ratio.

Despite the often difficult situation, the teams of our daycare centres acted very professionally and were able to cope with even the most difficult demands, so that - despite the pandemic - we have to speak of a successful working year. We can give our daycare centres and our team the certificate "crisis-proof", even if this extra workload cannot be sustained in the long run. Like everyone, we hope for a normalisation of the general situation soon.

Due to the careful implementation of the hygiene guidelines and the largely responsible cooperation of the childrens parents, we did not have a single confirmed case of Coronavirus among our daycare workers. However, due to first-degree contact persons in the environment of our team, quarantine had to be ordered several times by the public health department. Our operational care absences are therefore mainly due to the staff-intensive quarantine regulations, the changed, pandemic-related care ratios and ordinary staff illnesses.

Our action plan for compliance with pandemic-related guidelines 2020

• From 16.03. Closure of all daycare centres with maintenance of emergency care for system-relevant job groups.
• From 04.05. Introduction of extended emergency care with a focus on children with special support needs, system-relevant jobs, single parents, working people without other care options. Maximum group size set at 10 children.
• From 16.06. limited regular operation with up to 15 children per group and separate groups. Creation of a 5th group in the gym of the Villa Unibunt daycare centre in order to be able to care for a higher number of children.
• From 25.06. limited regular operation with up to 25 children per group and separate groups in the Villa Unibunt daycare centre, as there are also larger groups here.
• From 01.08. Regular operation under Corona conditions in compliance with general Coronavirus hygiene rules (regular hand disinfection, parents are required to wear masks in the daycare centre, parent evenings and parent meetings only digitally or by telephone).
• From 15.12. Regular operation in case of urgent need. Only appeals were made to parents to look after their children at home, but no mandatory closure or reduction was ordered. All parents had the option to bring their child to the daycare centre.

The communication effort to communicate the respective valid guidelines and measures was enormous. It was almost impossible for us to create planning security for the parents. We would therefore like to thank all the parents who were able to react flexibly to changes at short notice due to the pandemic and who had understanding for the situation. The implementation of the measures was also financially burdensome. All in all, the department had additional material costs of several thousand euros for the implementation of the hygiene guidelines. Due to the closures, some colleagues had to go on short-time work temporarily. The Studierendenwerk increased the short-time allowance of all nursery teachers on short-time work to 100%.

Care figures over the course of the year
In concrete terms, the pandemic had the following effects on the occupancy of our daycare centres in 2020. Since we had an admission freeze for new children in the daycare centres between March and July, a few daycare places remained unfilled.

Other facts for the financial year

• Parental fees were partially suspended by the youth welfare offices in the months of March, April and May. This had a particularly positive effect on low-income parents - which of course include students in particular.
• Due to the increased staffing requirements for children settling in, no new children were admitted to the daycare centre in the period from March to July.
• The staff was occupied - especially in the first wave - with the tasks of inventory, basic cleaning and repair of the facility.
• Where possible, our team was working from home on the tasks of portfolio work, concept development, the development of new pedagogical offers, our own further training and, in the case of the Villa Unibunt daycare centre, the production of YouTube videos for the Children Corona Channel.
• For our meetings with parents, but also with the team, the Go-To-Meeting software was introduced and used to conduct parent meetings, team meetings and staff meetings.
• In April, the meal payments were suspended in all of our daycare centres.
• In May, a 50% and a 100% meal payments were introduced in all daycare centres, depending on the child's attendance days.

Conclusion.
Basically, it can be said that our childcare services were almost back to normal at the daycare centres from August onwards at the latest - contrary to the nationwide trend of closing facilities in the 2nd and 3rd wave of Coronavirus. This clearly shows the very high systemic relevance of daycare centres. The great importance of childcare for a functioning economy and society - also in a pandemic - was more than evident. This important role must be taken into account even more by politics and businesses in the future and the corresponding appreciation must also be felt by our employees. We would like to see a clear signal in this regard in order to raise the status of the educational profession and to put the institutions in a good financial position in the long term.
We have felt very clearly - not only with the pandemic - that the labour market for well-trained educational staff is very difficult. We are looking forward to the professionalisation initiative within the framework of the "Good Childcare Act", but we would also like to point out that further professionalisation will only be possible if the educational profession becomes much more attractive. As in previous years, we continue to propose that the restriction on better employment status for childcare professionals be lifted or substantially eased. We urgently need incentives if we want to prevail in the competitive labour market in the field of early childhood education.

Forecast
Of course, we are working towards the implementation of the requirements from the new Rhineland-Palatinate Childcare Act, which will take effect from July 2021. At present, however, it is not yet possible to foresee whether all the regulations will also be suitable for day-to-day daycare:

• With the new Childcare Act, for example (as of today), the operating permit for the daycare centres must be reissued every year - based on the number of occupied places on the cut-off date of 31 May. As a result, the staffing ratio of each daycare centre is also redefined every year. The decisive factor is the occupancy rate of the daycare centre with children under two years of age (U2) and children over two years of age (Ü2) on the reference date. For us, this means that in the future we will have to "strategically" admit children based on their birthdays if we want to keep our staff. This means that siblings or "hardship cases" can no longer be taken into account as usual. Furthermore, new staff can only ever be hired on a temporary basis, as we do not know whether the required staffing ratio will still apply in the coming year. This makes it much more difficult to issue long-term employment contracts. However, it is precisely long-term employment contracts that are the game changer in the very competitive labour market for educators.
• In the future, every daycare centres must offer "care blocks". These care blocks must also be proven by 31.05. of the year. Parents conclude contracts with the Kita for these care blocks (07:30 - 15:30; 08:00 - 16:30; 08:30 - 16:30). These contracts must be recorded in the Kita's operating permit and are also relevant for the staffing ratio. The child "should" fulfil this contract at least once a week, i.e. be in the facility at least once a week for 7 hours and 1 minute. We do not yet know the consequences of deviating from or not making full use of the care time - e.g. due to long-term illness of the child - but at the moment they indicate a reduction in staff by the Youth Welfare Office or a reduction in the reimbursement of staff costs.

In the interest of our children, our daycare parents and our staff, we will continue to critically examine the new regulations and seek dialogue with the responsible authorities in case of ambiguities. However, we are very positive about the plan for further professionalisation within the childcare centres and look forward to well-positioned and modern daycare centres of tomorrow.