Community childcare in Mayo - a real success story almost

by Barbara Daly

I HAVE written before about my involvement in our local community childcare service.

It started out as a long-running pre-school, and then almost two years ago a full day childcare service (creche) was opened in the same building followed by an after-school service at the local national school.

All three services are operated and managed by the one community childcare organisation.

A full time manager is employed and altogether 10 childcare staff are employed plus four relief staff.

There are 15 places in the creche, 22 places morning and afternoon in the pre-school and 24 spaces in the after-school. A lot of children are cared for.

This is a success story without a doubt. The entire service is managed by a voluntary board which is made up of parents, management staff and several members of the community.

There is huge positivity surrounding the service and great enthusiasm within the staff and the board to see the service succeed and expand.

It took a lot of voluntary hours to get it this far and multiple inspections, policies, procedures and checklists. The administration of such a service is enormous and extremely time-consuming.

Not only that, the manager of the service needs to have many skills that the average childcare worker would never have - health and safety, HR, accounting and finance, employment law, to name but a few.

Yet it is not enough. The waiting list for the creche has passed 40 children. Parents are adding their babies to the waiting list before the babies are born.

Parents are ringing from other towns looking for places. The pre-school is well-subscribed and the after-school will probably have a waiting list by September 2024.

The need for affordable, dependable, professional childcare has never been greater.

I use the creche, playschool and after-school for my children and they love every minute they spend there.

Yet I am one of the lucky few that was involved from the beginning and has a space. It is tough on all the other families who are waiting on a place and in the meantime cannot return to work or are depending on grandparents and neighbours.

I know a lot of the stories of the families who use these services in our community and I know the importance of it in their lives. The necessary mental respite it gives to single parents, the chance it gives for low-income families to add a second wage to their household, the support it is to those with little support and need it most.

I also see the benefits to children through my own children - the socialisation of children, the care and checks of professionals for children with varying needs, the provision of a hot meal to those attending the creche. So many benefits - benefit which should be available to all children.

We are re-structuring our service and hope to be able to offer extra pre-school and creche places by September 2024.

However inspections will be had, building works have to take place and extra equipment bought. We are a non-profit charity and funds are very hard to come by. We are writing letters and trying to come up with ways to raise the money needed.

We need to be able to offer these extra places and in turn the increased numbers will allow our service a chance to remain viable into the future.

Bizarrely, considering the need, many creches and childcare facilities are closing around the country, broken by rising costs, the weight of admin and the loss of staff to better paid employment.

We are also planning an extension in the hope that we might be successful in applying for the Building Blocks Government grant announced by Minister Roderick O’Gorman in the last budget.

No small task in itself when trying to get plans drawn up and various permissions in line - all on a shoestring budget and with limited manpower.

This will be a huge project and again many hundreds of volunteer hours will go into getting ready for it and rolling it out successfully.

Meanwhile our after-school service which operates from part of a room in the local school needs to provide its own building to continue operating. The school has no space left.

The space the after-school currently occupies is not adequate for the ever-growing numbers and it is only the amazing efforts of the staff that allow it to succeed under such pressures.

Providing a modular room of some sort on the grounds will be another funding headache that we will have to start considering and soon.

The subsidies available for parents using Tusla-registered childcare services such as ours are very good and due to rise again soon to €2.14 per hour per child, minimum.

This is very welcome but the flipside is that it will only make facilities like ours even more popular.

The challenges and the struggles involved in keeping these services open and catering for the needs of the community are almost overwhelming already.

The government needs to step in. This is not an area that should be left to communities to cover by themselves.

The need is too great and the negative effects of not having affordable childcare available, on both the financial and emotional wellbeing of families and communities, are also too great.