"It is necessary to reform the current scale".
This is what the High Council for the Family, Childhood and Age (HCFEA) believes.
This consultative body, responsible for advising the government, underlines that the aid paid to families who entrust their child to a childminder presents "several major drawbacks" and makes the reception with a "nanny" often more expensive than in a crèche, especially for the less well-off families.
According to experts, the CMG (additional free choice of childcare) should be adjusted according to the number of hours of actual childcare, and no longer be based on a package that disadvantages families with significant childcare needs.
Adapt to local disparities
Aid should also depend in part on the prices charged by the childminder in order to adapt to local disparities, "nannies" being more expensive in large cities, especially in Paris, the authors point out.
They also recommend removing the “threshold effects” which can currently lead to a sudden drop in aid “when the household exceeds even one euro” a certain level of income.
A possible reform should make it possible to reduce the difference in out-of-pocket expenses between the maternal assistant and the crèche.
In the current system, this difference "is difficult to justify" and "limits recourse" to childminders who are however often the only type of childcare available.
Thus, among the poorest 20% of households, only 2.5% have recourse to a “nanny”, against 37% among the richest 20%.
To reduce this difference, "a reform at unchanged cost is to be excluded", warns the HCFEA, which estimates the necessary budgetary effort between 246 and 264 million euros per year.
A reform awaited by nannies
This assessment "is one of the elements taken into consideration" within the framework of the current reflection of the government on this subject, confides the entourage of the Secretary of State in charge of Children and Families, Adrien Taquet, who had commissioned this report. .
"No decision has yet been taken" but the idea of a reform of the CMG is one of the avenues studied and could possibly appear in the financing bill of the "Sécu" presented in the fall, he said. -on added from the same source.
This reform is in any case eagerly awaited by the "nannies", whose numbers have shrunk by 15% in less than ten years, in particular because a certain number of them are struggling to find enough children to look after, declares Sandra Onyszko, from UFNAFAAM, one of the main associations representing the profession. “Helping families means helping childminders to make a living from their work”.