The situation with day-care centers has improved if you think about it new Kita funding atlas the Senate Department for Youth follows. Accordingly, the number of neighborhoods with the greatest need for new places has fallen from 48 to 31 within a year. This news caused astonishment at the Parity Welfare Association and the “Kitastimme” association.
First of all, the specific information that the Senate Department for Youth recently published: It says that the situation in nine out of twelve districts is better than a year ago. In Treptow-Köpenick, for example, the number of neighborhoods with a particularly severe shortage has even been reduced from eight to four. In Marzahn-Hellersdorf four out of six stayed in the category, in Tempelhof-Schoeneberg two out of five.
In Mitte, however, two new neighborhoods were added that are considered to be particularly in need of day-care center expansion. It is the area around Osloer Strasse and northern Brunnenstrasse. Steglitz-Zehlendorf and Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg are the only districts that hardly need any additional places according to the youth administration categories.
Experts find the atlas “needs comment”
Opinions differ widely as to how this information should be interpreted. Because in view of the influx of people from the Ukraine and the fact that the proportion of children of preschool age who are not cared for has been increasing for years instead of falling, the positive trend of the new Kitaatlasse is causing skepticism.
20,000
According to the Kita Alliance, Berlin needs new childcare places by 2026.
“The atlas needs comment,” said Dorothee Thielen on Wednesday. The day-care center officer of the Paritätischer Wohlfahtsverband reminded that the German Youth Institute (DJI) had calculated that over 17,000 new places would be needed in Berlin by 2026. In order for parents to be able to use their legal right to wish and choose when looking for a place in a day care center, 20,000 new places would have to be created, Thielen quotes a forecast by the Berlin day care center alliance.
Under the previous SPD leadership, the Senate Department for Youth assumed that only 5,600 new places would be needed in the same period. She always assumed that only 50 percent of parents want a daycare place for their children under the age of three and only 95 percent for their four to six year old children. The DJI is assuming a much higher demand – which is only not taking place because the hurdles in front of a daycare place are too high.
Kita parents have a legal right to wish and choose.
Dorothee ThielenKita consultant
The penultimate red-red-green coalition had therefore decided that all parents should be sent a voucher for a daycare place as soon as their child is one year old and is therefore entitled to care. This intention was not implemented. Instead, the shortage is still so great that the district offices do not even manage to allocate places to children who, due to a lack of German language skills, would be obliged to attend daycare or other support before they start school.
The former Neukölln youth councilor Falko Liecke (CDU), who has been Secretary of State for Youth for the new Senator Katharina Günther-Wünsch (CDU) since this week, is one of those who know this emergency situation from their own experience. He can in future on the coalition agreement point out that “more childcare places for children of all ages” are to be created. According to the contract, day-care center space expansions and day-care center space preservation through renovations should be carried out “by expanding and strengthening the day-care center expansion program on the basis of the day-care center funding atlas”.
A new daycare place costs 56,000 euros
But how reliable is this survey when used for requirements planning? The fact that, despite the immense deficit of 5,600 to 20,000 places, he has corrected the needs in countless neighborhoods downwards, reduces the confidence of some daycare providers in this instrument.
Stefan Spieker from the Kitastimme support association also calls the Kita funding atlas “non-transparent”. Although some new daycare centers went online in 2022, they were planned years ago. In the next few years, Spieker says, there will be little that is new as a result of the cut subsidies. The funds now in the budget were only enough for a few hundred places, at the same time existing daycare centers went offline – due to termination of rental contracts or because of dilapidation.
In fact, the money previously earmarked in the budget can only cover a fraction of the required capacities – even if you take the low requirements calculated by the old Senate as a basis. The reason for this is the increased construction costs. The Senate wants to pay the providers 30,000 euros per place, but the Berlin Kita Alliance puts the costs for new buildings at 56,000 euros. The possibilities of creating new spaces through simple extensions have largely been exhausted.
