Daycare centers – The G+L in March 2024

It’s still one of the key disciplines in open space planning: designing outdoor spaces for nurseries and crèches. In the March issue, we present the currently most exciting projects from national and international daycare centers and use them to define what a contemporary daycare center must be able to do today – and focus on which equipment and assets should not be missing under any circumstances.

For ten years now, children in Germany have had a legal right to a place in a daycare center from the age of one and thus to early childhood education. However, there is currently a shortage of 430,000 daycare places nationwide: 385,900 places in western Germany and 44,700 places in eastern Germany. This was the result of the latest calculations by the Bertelsmann Stiftung in November 2023.

The main problem with the shortage of daycare places is staffing. According to the Bertelsmann Stiftung, 100,000 new positions need to be filled. If the scientific recommendations for optimal staffing ratios were followed, as many as 300,000 additional specialists would be needed. Far too few educators have been trained over the years. The training was also very unattractive – comparatively long and unpaid – and the wages of the finished educators were also repeatedly criticized. However, as part of the last collective agreement, nursery teachers were able to look forward to a ten percent pay rise, which was implemented on March 1, 2024. However, this will no longer stop the collapse. According to Anette Stein from the Bertelsmann Stiftung, we are right in the middle of it.

Yes, the figures on the shortage of daycare centers hurt. But no child, no problem, right? Yes, the daycare emergency affects us all. Us as colleagues and employers who cannot (and do not want to) do without mothers and fathers all the time, and us as a society that is committed to protecting children’s rights, that loudly demands that mothers should be able to get back to work quickly and that vehemently advocates more equality in the system. The dramatic situation in daycare centers shows: Society and politics have reacted far too late – also in this area – and have turned a blind eye to the changing needs of parents and children, as well as those of childcare workers.

And yet the only thing that helps is to look ahead and ask: What now? The Bertelsmann Stiftung proposes reducing childcare hours to a total of six hours a day. This would be a drastic but very effective measure to guarantee all children the legal right to a place in a daycare center in the future. In turn, Federal Minister for Family Affairs Lisa Paus launched the so-called Kita Quality Act at the beginning of 2023 with four billion euros for the federal states. According to the BMFSFJ website, this will make it possible to create “up to 90,000 new childcare places in daycare centers and childminders”. According to Adam Riese, only 340,000 more places are still missing. So, dear Ms. Paus, we need to work on this.

And what can we planners do? Not be so arrogant as to think that we still know what a modern daycare center needs. Instead, we can listen, observe and try to find economical solutions that promote – not torpedo – the running of the facility and early childhood education. And we can provide additional support to our colleagues and employees with children in their day-to-day work. By being supportive and showing understanding. As best we can.

The March issue is available here in the store.

In February, everything revolved around Paris and the impact of the Olympic Games in the city. Find out more in the editorial. You can find the magazine here in the store.