In the AGF conference on high quality day care facilities and services for children, the experts discussed an AGF paper proposal on what high quality in child care facilities means and how it can be be achieved.
The number of children, particularly under the age of three, visiting day care facilities has been rising in the past years. Children are also visiting a facility earlier and for a longer period of time and parents as well as society demands for day care facilities are increasing. While so far mainly the quantity of places in child care facilities was discussed, the debate about the quality of the services is now catching up.
About 60 participants, representing family and children organisations, child care facilities, parents organisations, politics and administration, discussed central political issues to secure a high quality in child care facilities on the federal level. To promote discussion, the AGF presented a discussion paper which was commented on by the participants from three different perspectives: parents, children and child care service providers.
Following the welcome note of AGF chairwoman, Christel Riemann-Hanewinckel, Ivonne Famula presented the main topics regarding a high qualitiy identified by the AGF. Among these are the access to the facility, the opening hours, the qualification of the employees, the teacher-child-ratio, the guidelines of pedagogical work, the cooperation of parents and teacher and the evaluation of the work.
These topics were commented on by:
- Christian Bethke, Berliner Institut für Frühpädagogik (BIfF), representing the childrens’ perspective;
- Katrin Molkentin, spokesperson of Bundeselternvertretung der Kinder in Kindertageseinrichtungen und Kindertagespflege (BEVKI), representing the perspective of the parents and
- Norbert Bender, Bundesverband der Eltern-Initiativkitas und kleinen freien Träger, representing the perspective of the child care institutions and providers.
Based on these inputs the participants discussed, what high qualitiy in child care facilities should look like and how this could be achieved.
AGF will publish a position paper following these discussions within the next months.