“Clear shortage of skilled workers”: daycare centers in the Freising district are urgently looking for staff – help from the state is required

Created: 08/11/2022, 7:00 p.m

By: Magdalena Hoecherl

There are children – but there is a lack of staff, both front and back: Childcare is becoming a problem in almost all municipalities.

Symbolic picture © Uwe Anspach

The lack of staff in daycare centers is also having an impact in the Freising district.

The bottleneck will not be resolved quickly - and certainly not without help from the state.

District

– educators, nannies, pedagogical specialists: If you look around on the usual job portals, the search engine spits out around 70 job offers in Freising and a radius of 20 kilometers.

The lack of staff has been an issue at municipal council meetings for months.

Most recently, Markt Au had to announce that the legal entitlement to a daycare place could not be met for all parents.

Staff in Freising "very decimated"

The staff situation is also tense in the 15 municipal day-care centers in the city of Freising, in which around 1050 children are cared for.

"Like all providers, we are experiencing the blatant shortage of skilled workers, especially in the Munich metropolitan region," says Christl Steinhart, spokeswoman for the city.

Due to the increase in sick days, long-term illnesses, the professional change of pedagogical staff or the retirement of long-term employees as well as due to maternity or parental leave, the staff is currently “very decimated”.

From the previous 189 pedagogical employees, 25 educators alone are not available due to pregnancy or maternity leave - employees whose mostly full-time positions could not be filled at all or could only be filled part-time.

Care times are shortened

The consequence: As of now, it is assumed that it will be unavoidable in eleven of the 15 day-care centers to shorten the care times from the new kindergarten year onwards.

"Most of the care ends 30 minutes or an hour earlier than before, in a single case the care begins 30 minutes later," says Steinhart.

The parents concerned have been informed.

The feedback was “mostly reasonable”.

However, Steinhart also knows: "In specific individual cases, no amount of understanding will help the parents about their personal bottlenecks and the associated childcare needs."

The situation is not only difficult for the parents, but also for the daycare staff: “The workload is noticeable among the existing staff, the pandemic hit the specialists, there are more and more requests for working time reductions,” says Steinhart.

(By the way: everything from the region is now also available in our regular Freising newsletter.)

Aicke Morgenstern, head of the education and training department at the city of Moosburg, reports something similar.

“As in all cities, the staff situation in the facilities is not good.

There is a continuous search for specialists and trainees.” In the five municipal kindergartens with a total of 278 places, however, the childcare times have not yet had to be reduced in the long term.

In the event of illness, however, adjustments had to be made for a short time, about a week.

"That was discussed with the parents as best as possible," says Morgenstern.

Most of these temporary changes would be understood.

However, anyone who does not get a childcare place per se is often downright desperate.

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There is still a vacancy in Eching

In Eching, people are currently still staying afloat.

As everywhere, finding staff is difficult.

"We still have one vacancy at this point in time," reports department head Johanna Fütterer.

However, the care in the three community kindergartens, which offer space for 215 girls and boys, is still running as usual.

According to Fütterer, a fourth facility is also being planned.

Personnel care in focus

The city of Moosburg is also looking to add more childcare places.

At the end of the year, the children's home in Amperauen is to be opened for 90 kindergarten children and 24 crèche children.

Another crèche is planned, and two potential daycare locations are currently being reviewed and all-day care models are planned in the elementary schools.

However: "The personnel problem cannot be changed by us," says Aicke Morgenstern.

"That is a state task."

In order to find staff, the city of Freising relies on incentives such as a variety of working time models, a Freising allowance and public transport tickets.

The focus is also on staff care, i.e. not overloading the existing staff.

"For us, this is part of our duty of care as an employer and is the basis for maintaining the high level of professional quality in our facilities."

You can find more current news from the district of Freising at Merkur.de/Freising.