Maison-Relais, or wraparound care, will soon offer additional homework help - a service which, while practical for parents, poses a challenge to childcare providers.
In order to relieve families financially and to enable all children to have access to a high-quality non-formal education, in May the Minister of Education announced free extracurricular care during term-time, to begin this September. The Maison-Relais childcare facilities will also introduce free homework help.
Childcare providers feared an influx of pupils at the time of the announcement, but it does not seem to have materialised, according to Marco Deepen, director of the Red Cross's informal education service.
Each year children join the conventional childcare structure, with around 3,500-4,000 children in childcare. However, this number has not increased despite the announcement of free childcare, Deepen explained.
One concern for providers is that parents may not have the motivation to inform the structures of their child's absence if they cannot attend after-school care. As the service is now free, the hours will no longer be invoiced if the child has an unreported absence.
The unregistered hours will not be charged to the parents as of September, but instead to the government, which could pose a potential challenge in terms of wasting taxpayer money.
In the private sector, facilities have expressed concern that the Maison-Relais care structures could stay empty during the school holidays, but will still incur fixed operating costs. Over the holidays, the paid-for care does not apply and the €100 weekly ceiling is removed, while the food voucher service continues as it always has in the past. Meals must then be paid for by parents, said Paolo Fiorucci, director of a care structure in Bonnevoie.
There are also restrictions during term-time: if a private care provider's rate exceeds €6 per child, per hour, then parents must pay the difference. In some cases this can amount to over €100 per child, per month. In addition, the old payment system, which employed food vouchers, or the Chèque-Service system, still applies for any care before 7am and after 7pm.
Incidentally, the state-funded childcare only applies to school-aged children, not those in pre-school.
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