The Westmeath nanny case, in which a child-minder received a suspended one-year sentence for hurting a baby in her care, coupled with the screening of Nannies from Hell on TV the same day this week, sent a chill down the spines of most parents employing someone to mind their children.
Guesstimates suggest that up to 80,000 Irish children under three, and well over 100,000 under 12, are currently being minded by an army of child-minders, nannies, nurseries and au pairs working in a mostly unregulated, low-pay, black economy industry. Parents frequently feel guilty and worried about their child-care arrangements, while minders feel vulnerable, unappreciated and certainly underpaid for what they do.
There is a need for urgent action to sort out a situation which all parents working outside the home have had to deal with, while for more than two decades task forces and commissions and committees and working groups have produced report after report recommending what governments should do.
Even more immediately, however, parents need reassurance, says Mr Owen Keenan, director of Barnardo's child-care agency. After reading how the Westmeath child-minder shook a baby until he suffered a brain haemorrhage, and watching the TV programme showing video recordings of "nannies" hitting babies and small children, "parents may feel uneasy and worried, while many very good child-minders will feel vulnerable, and wonder if it's worth it," says Mr Keenan. "The pendulum could swing to hysteria: I'd like to reassure parents that the majority of child-care situations are satisfactory."
If there is a lesson to be learned, it is that parents and child-minders clarify everything - number of hours to be worked, attitudes to discipline, standards of hygiene, whether holidays should be paid - before taking each other on. And, if they feel something is not quite right, they should trust their instincts and confront the situation sooner rather than later.
"Parents should deal with the matter even at the risk of losing their minder," says Mr Keenan.
Many experts and parents will agree with Mr Keenan when he says video spy cameras and private detectives "are a waste of resources that would be better deployed creating a good system than putting a bad one right". Ms Frances Fitzgerald TD believes that a parent who gets to the point of wanting a video spy is already aware that something is wrong and should deal directly with the problem.
Deirdre, a mother of two who has had five successive child minders minding her two children in her own home over the past six years, agrees: "The idea of someone pulling the wool over your eyes is a bit of a cod: if you are paying attention, you'll pick up on problems." She ruefully reflects what many honest parents would admit when she says: "I don't think I'd pass the secret camera test myself." She agrees, however, that the most worrying time for parents is when children are too young to talk. Now that hers are aged three and five, she is confident that if she makes time to listen to them, any problems with a child-minder will surface.
Everyone in the child-care business believes there is a need for regulations in the industry and help, by way of tax relief and/or subsidy, for parents so that safe and affordable child care is available for everyone who needs it. At present, there is just one regulation, Section 7 of the 1991 Childcare Act, which came into effect only in 1996. This stipulates that minders caring for four or more children under the age of three in their own homes must register with their local health board and comply with certain provisions. But the Eastern Health Board, in whose area most minders operate, has not even begun to operate this regulation.
More than that, this regulation is relevant for only a minority of child-care arrangements. The Government's current Expert Working Group on Childcare is soon to commission research that will yield real information about child care in Ireland. At present, estimates suggest that most children are cared for in a child-minder's own home, with the minder taking in usually one or two children.
Average pay, according to Ms Patricia Hayes Murray of the National Childminding Association, is £50 a week per child, which works out at about £1.45 to £1.50 an hour; less in rural Ireland. She urges all child-minders (including nannies working in people's homes) to register with the association to get information, to find out about insurance, and to improve their conditions.
Many parents would like regulations governing the bewildering variety of child-care situations, but will the fact that so many arrangements take place in the black economy militate against this? Ms Hayes Murray thinks that all parents should be given an allowance of, say, £85, for the only or youngest child, which could then be used to improve child-minders' wages, or to subsidise a parent who wishes to work full-time in the home.
In the meantime, the child-care choices for parents include, as well as child-minders, nurseries (at an average cost of £60 to £70 per child per week); live-in nannies (£120 to £130 a week); nannies working in your home (£140 a week); au pairs (£40 "pocket money" for 35-hours a week). There is some, but nothing like enough, child care to meet a crying need for after-school and holiday-time child care.
In the long term, everyone hopes the Government will act to regulate the industry in a positive way that will help parents financially, establish minimum standards, encourage training, and create jobs. The Expert Working Group is to publish an interim report in June and a final one in December.
In the meantime, parents can get help from Barnardo's on how to choose appropriate child care by writing to its National Children's Resource Centre, Christchurch Square, Dublin 1 (Tel: 01453 0355). Anyone looking for information from the National Childminding Association should write to 10 Marlborough Court, Dublin 1 (Tel: 01287 5619; Fax: 287 1111).
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