This is an unexpected effect of the Covid crisis. With the rise of teleworking, partial unemployment and repeated confinements, parents of young children have changed their childcare habits. So much so that some nurseries, especially in Île-de-France, came out of this period very shaken. No more five-day weeks and regular on-call rhythms modeled on traditional working days, from 8 am to 6 pm. Today, parents function, especially when working in the tertiary sector, day to day, according to their schedule and their workload.
Some, who lost their jobs, also took their children out of the nursery.
“The needs of parents have changed.
Those who telework drop their children off later, sometimes pick them up earlier and now use the crèches as a half-day nursery.
If these habits persist, nurseries will have to reinvent themselves ”, assures Magali Bachelier, president of Accent petitefance, an associative network which has 3,000 nurseries in the territory, in urban and rural areas.
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The same goes for private establishments like Babilou, which has 450 reception sites.
“There have been societal changes.
Parents understood that the time they spent in transport could be spent with their children.
We are thinking about readjusting our schedules and our future establishments because, in particular in Île-de-France, there have been moves in the suburbs or in the provinces ”, recognizes Marion Weissberg, director of coordination.
Company or inter-company day nurseries, located in office districts, have been deserted.
Result: some groups, such as L'Oréal, are also reviewing their strategy on the subject.
"Adapting to new expectations"
"To adapt to the new expectations of employees who, since the health crisis, have been seeking more proximity to their home, L'Oréal has directed its reserved places to cradles in a network, near their homes," said a spokesperson. of this business. However. While waiting for nursery companies, public, private or associative, to adapt to these new lifestyles, some are faced with a significant shortfall, linked to reductions in the subsidy of the National Family Allowance Fund (Cnaf) (
Editor's note: it makes a “fee-for-service” payment for nurseries based on the hourly occupancy rate of the cradles. The latter is calculated using a “pointing” system
).
In a letter sent in the fall to the Cnaf, the three large networks of French nurseries, Uniopss, AMF and FFEC, were already sounding the alarm. “It is imperative that solutions are found to compensate for this decline in activity,” they wrote. On the side of the Cnaf, it is assured that, pending a return to normal, exceptional aid has already been released for all nurseries (around 1 billion euros for 2020-2021) and that to compensate for the drop in attendance, an increase in subsidies has also been allocated.
The subject should be raised again at the national conference of families in September, in the presence of Secretary of State Adrien Taquet. "It is time to reform this logic of fee-for-service by thinking about setting up a package," says Elsa Hervy, general delegate of the French Federation of nursery businesses (FFEC) which brings together 1,900 structures.