The program of free access to daycare centers, which the Government baptized this Thursday as Creche Feliz, wants to reach 100,000 children in three years, revealed this Thursday the Minister of Labor, Solidarity and Social Security of São João da Madeira.
The announcement was made by Ana Mendes Godinho during a visit to the Albino Dias García Nursery, which, in that municipality of the Aveiro district, previously only had 19 zero-cost vacancies and now has 44in a global universe 84 Places for children from 4 to 36 months.
Our goal is, in three years, when the program is fully implemented, reach a hundred thousand children”, says the governor.
In its start-up phase, Creche Feliz already covers 46,000 vacancieswhich are expected to be fully completed by December 2022, either by children who, having been born after September 1, 2021, were automatically entitled to free access, or by those who, although older, benefit from free access free because their households are in the first or second income bracket.
20 million to open five thousand places in nurseries this school year
During the month of September, a procedure will also be opened to create more 5,000 free places for the academic year 2023/2024, regardless of the economic situation of the families in question. The measure will be financed in €20 million by the Recovery and Resilience Plan, and, in the distribution of these funds, priority will be given to projects that, on the one hand, aim to reconvert existing spaces and, on the other hand, increase response capacity in geographical areas high demand and demographic concentration.
For now, the The free places available refer only to establishments of the public and social network, but in January 2023 the Creche Feliz program will also be extended to private institutionsin order to also help families who have come to these spaces because they have not found an answer in the state and solidarity sector.
Ana Mendes Godinho says that the program will be subject to a “monthly follow up” because “this measure may induce more children to look for nurseries” and, therefore, the State’s response must be gradually adjusted “to the needs of families.”
Underlining that it is a project of “great complexity”, the minister assumes that “it is not possible, suddenly, to have an exponential growth” of free services, but guarantees that the universalization of childcare centers will be achieved and believes that it will work as a boost to birth rates, which is “a priority for the country and a key instrument to support young people.”
In this perspective, the minister defends that “this is a special and important day for the country” and says: “We are really taking the first steps of a happy day. (…) Sometimes we think ‘why don’t we implement this measure before?’, but today we are capable of making this social investment, which is very large and in which we are, in essence, mobilizing resources, believing that this initiative is transformative of lives”.
To facilitate general access to the free network, the This Thursday, the Social Security website made available an area specifically dedicated to the Creche Feliz programwith various information on the subject, including the list of criteria that prioritize access to vacancies — what will happen if the child has a disability or is identified by the authorities as being at risk.
As for the cost of the new program, so far the State has financed 290 euros of the expense associated with each child in the first and second income brackets who attended a public nursery school, but now this value becomes, for all free vacancies, of the order of 460 euros. This amount includes food, hygiene and pedagogical, recreational and motor skills, as well as tuition and insurance related to the extended day.
The latest data from the Ministry of Labour, Solidarity and Social Security on the global universe of users of the public nursery network refer to 2018 and indicate that, at that time, there were 118,000 children up to 3 years old in Portugal enrolled in these educational centers . establishments, regardless of the level of family income of the respective households.
Source: Observadora
