Düsseldorf.
Many daycare centers in NRW lack specialist staff to maintain care. The City Day is therefore pushing for unconventional solutions.
As a response to the chronic shortage of skilled workers in the day-care centers, the North Rhine-Westphalian Association of Cities and Towns proposes employing further trained staff without relevant professional training.
“The shortage of skilled workers in day-care centers in North Rhine-Westphalia continues to worsen,” said the deputy chairman of the NRW City Council, Bochum’s Mayor Thomas Eiskirch (SPD), the German Press Agency in Düsseldorf. “It is becoming increasingly difficult for the cities and other providers to offer the care times that parents need for their children.” If there is also a phase of illness, the staffing level is often no longer sufficient to maintain the care.
NRW Family Minister Josefine Paul must act
“The country must act now,” demanded the City Council Vice President. “The cities are desperately looking for qualified personnel. But there is none.” Therefore, NRW Family Minister Josefine Paul (Greens) must finally move and enable the use of suitable staff who are willing to undergo further training.
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“Such supplementary workers could help to ease the situation, at least in the short term,” emphasized Eiskirch. The state should therefore develop a qualification concept for these additional workers and involve the municipalities, the two state youth welfare offices and the welfare organizations and churches.
The country’s personnel regulations should become more flexible
“The state’s personnel regulations must become more flexible in this acute situation,” demanded Eiskirch. Apart from “purely cosmetic changes”, nothing has happened so far. The use of psychologists, sports and art educators in day-care centers has been made possible. “But these are professional groups that are themselves affected by the shortage of skilled workers,” said the SPD politician.
The country must finally systematically tackle the shortage of skilled workers in the social and educational professions. This included more training capacities and faster and easier recognition of foreign professional qualifications.
City day calls for financial relief for the providers
In addition, the City Day calls for financial relief for the responsible bodies. “Early childhood education in the day-care center area, like school education, must be publicly financed as a state task,” said Eiskirch. A higher state share in the financing of child day care also makes it possible to pay trainees in the day care center.
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According to a recently published proposal by the Ministry for Family Affairs, around one in ten of the approximately 10,700 day-care centers in North Rhine-Westphalia had to cut back on their offerings, some of them drastically, in February due to a lack of staff. In a survey of day-care center managers presented in March for the Education and Training Association, 99 percent confirmed that the staff shortage is also causing more absenteeism and sick leave among employees.
Paul had acknowledged the shortcoming, but at the same time emphasized that it “cannot be dealt with simply with a snap of the fingers”, but only continuously and with a bundle of measures. An emergency program by the state government is a first step towards relief. (dpa)
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