Access to childcare outside ECCE hours dependent on parents’ income and education
One of the key recommendations of the Tusla study is that the focus of childcare policy must broaden from just the early years. There is a necessity for “high quality childcare at all stages of childhood”.
When a year’s free preschool year for every child aged between three and four was announced in 2009, it was heralded as a measure that would particularly benefit the most disadvantaged children.
The Early Childhood and Care Education (ECCE) scheme would give all children access to structured education and play, three hours a day, five days a week, over the 38-week school year in preparation for formal schooling.
However, research soon to be published by the University of Maynooth, commissioned by Tusla and the Irish Research Council, shows that welcome as ECCE has been, it is too little and too late in a child’s life to have any real impact.
This is the first research of its kind to look at the impact of childcare arrangements on children’s development from infancy to age nine and, drawing as it does on the Growing Up in Ireland study which is tracking almost 20,000 children and infants, its findings are robust and important.
It shows access to childcare outside those ECCE hours, and in the years before and after the preschool year, is highly dependent on the income, education and employment status of a child’s parents.
