As of: February 5, 2024, 12:55 p.m
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Schleswig-Holszein's Social Minister Aminata Touré (Bündnis90/Greens) stands in the state parliament building.
© Markus Scholz/dpa
Social Minister Aminata Touré is planning a major daycare reform.
The Green politician combines three goals with this.
Kiel - Social Affairs Minister Aminata Touré wants to ensure more reliability for parents in Schleswig-Holstein with the upcoming daycare reform.
“We introduced the parental contribution cap, which resulted in a lot of relief.
My ultimate goal is that parents can rely on their children being well and fully looked after, and not further reductions in contributions in times of tight budgets,” said the Green politician to the German Press Agency.
“The care ratio has improved, but we are still far from being at the point of 100% reliability.” This is currently the main issue for parents.
Touré referred to municipalities where parents automatically receive part of the money back if childcare is canceled, such as in Flensburg.
“As a parent, I will get money back, but my child is still at home,” said Touré.
In the end, this doesn't help parents because they still won't be able to go to work if the daycare center is canceled.
Touré wants to overhaul the system.
“The question is: What rules have we imposed on ourselves that sometimes make it more difficult to provide reliable care?”
Toure plans to present the first details of her plans in mid-February.
The final report on the evaluation of the existing daycare regulations should then be available.
“We have legally stipulated that daycare funding will grow dynamically by the end of 2025 from just under 700 million euros to around 731 million euros next year,” said Touré.
“For comparison: in 2011 we were at 70 million euros.” In addition to reliability, a transparent financing system that is reliable for municipalities, the state and parents is also necessary.
“Not all parties will definitely be 100 percent satisfied with this.”
Touré also wants to adjust the daycare standards.
“If we have theoretical quality standards, but in reality they lead to closures or limited daycare operations, no one is helped,” said the minister.
She doesn't want to delete requirements, but instead wants to enable more flexibility and reduce bureaucracy.
“If skilled workers are more concerned with bureaucracy than with their actual task, that is a problem in times of skilled labor shortages.”
In the coalition agreement in 2022, the Black and Green parties agreed on a further reduction in parental contributions.
“We particularly want to promote further improvements for families with low incomes and for families with several children,” it says.
“We want to ensure that the social scales correspond to this everywhere.”
Touré emphasized: “I fundamentally share the political goal of freedom of contribution.”
Of the 16 billion euros in the state budget, only 2.3 billion euros fell within their area.
“But now it’s about developing a sensible system with the resources available.” The reform is scheduled to be completed in the fall and then passed by parliament by the end of the year.
According to a study by the Bertelsmann Foundation from the end of November, the need for daycare places in Schleswig-Holstein will probably only be met in 2030.
As a result, the state lacked 15,600 daycare places to meet the needs of parents.
This was shown by the Bertelsmann Foundation’s calculations for the current “Country Monitoring of Early Childhood Education Systems”.
dpa