Place guarantee to ECEC

Since 1 August 2013 there has been a legal entitlement to a place in a day-care centre or in a child-minding service for children who have reached the age of one. This complements the legal entitlement introduced back in 1996 to care in a day-care centre for children from the age of three up to starting school. Verbatim, the corresponding regulations in Book Eight of the Social Code (Achtes Buch Sozialgesetzbuch – Kinder- und Jugendhilfe – SGB VIII, § 24 paragraphs 2 and 3) read:

"A child who has reached the age of one is entitled to early childhood support in a day-care centre or in a child-minding service until he or she reaches the age of three."

"A child who has reached the age of three is entitled to support in a day-care facility until he or she starts school. The public youth welfare organizations shall work to ensure that a demand-oriented range of all-day places is available for this age group. In case of special need or as a supplement, the child may also be fostered in home-based child care."

Correspondingly, the local maintaining bodies of public youth welfare (local authorities – Kommunen) are obliged to provide places in day-care centres or child-minding services to all children from the age of one until they start school. In this regard, they cooperate with the non-public youth welfare services.

If the legal entitlement to care in a day-care centre or in a child-minding service cannot be honoured by the city or municipality, parents can sue to have the legal entitlement honoured.

Affordability

Early childhood education and care is not a part of the state school system, and attendance of day-care centres is not, as a general rule, free of charge. To cover some of the costs, parental contributions are levied, the level of which may vary from Land to Land as well as from local authority to local authority and can depend on parents' financial circumstances, the number of children or daily attendance time. With the Act on the Further Development of the Quality and Participation in Child Care (Gesetz zur Weiterentwicklung der Qualität und zur Teilhabe in der Kindertagesbetreuung), the Federation is supporting the Länder between 2019 and 2022 with a total of around Euro 5.5 billion for measures to further develop the quality of child care and to relieve parents of the fees. To this end, a nationwide obligation for social staggering of parental contributions was introduced on August 1, 2019. The criteria that can be used are, for example, the parents' income, the number of children entitled to child benefit, and the daily child care hours. In the future, families with low incomes will be able to apply for full exemption from the obligation to pay contributions.

In recent years, more and more regulations have been introduced to relieve parents of their costs. In some Länder, for example, attendance at a day care centre is already completely or partially free of charge, depending on the child's age and the scope of care. In some Länder, no parent contributions are charged for the final year or the final years in a day-care centre for children.